
iip 








Class _^^sSZM 

Book_Jlia5_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The Lore of Cathay 



Dr. Martin's '^ Compendium of Information" 

^ p^YCLE OF pATHAY 

or 
China, South and North 

•WITH PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY 

W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D.. LL.D. 

Formerly President of the Imperial University of Peking 

With Seventy Illustrations, Map and Index, 8vo, 
Decorated Cloth, $2.00 



" A scholarly epitome of the life and thought of the Chi- 
nese nation for upwards of four thousand years." — Phila- 
delphia Times. 

"Will add even to the specialists knowledge of Chinese 
character. A storehouse of facts and personal reminiscen- 
ces." — San Francisco Chronicle. 

"Nowhere can be found a more luminous sketch of Chi- 
nese history during the last four thousand years , . . With 
the actual political and social condition of the country." — 
New York Sun. 

"Earnestly to be commended for its liberality of view, 
wealth of information and clear knowledge." — Boston 
Beacon. 



THE 
LORE OF CATHAY 

OR 

The Intellect of China 



^pAfy/uA 



By 

WrAfP/^ MARTIN, D.D., LL.D. 

Formerly President of the Chinese Imperial Uni'versity 

Author of 
**A Cycle of Cathay," "The Siege in Peking," Etc., Etc. 

With an Introductory Note by 
JAMES S. DENNIS, D.D. 

ILLUSTRATED 




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Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1901, 1912, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY J S T 0^ 



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Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave. 
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v£CI.A312296 



TO THE 

Hon. JOHN W. FOSTER 

FORMERLY SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

It is now ten years since Dr. Martin gathered into this 
volume the results of his long and profound study of the 
intellectual life of the Chinese. It was the fruit of much 
original research into the literary, philosophical, edu- 
cational, and religious history of China. Since then a 
wonderful decade of change and progress has put out of 
date much of the current literature concerning China. 
The rush of events and the swift transformations which 
have marked the entrance of an ancient and stolid empire 
into its modern era have been accompanied by overturn- 
ings which are unexampled in national annals for their 
rapid consummations, radical reforms, and international 
sequences. 

The Lore of Cathay, however, is still a timely book, 
since it deals with standard aspects of China's past which' 
are closely related to recent developments; it presents 
a survey of the higher life of the empire which throws 
light upon the surprising preparedness of its leading 
spirits to respond to the opportunities of a new era. The 
book, therefore, has still an instructive message to pres- 
ent-day readers in that it gives an intelligent and illu- 
minating perspective to the tumultuous China of to-day 
in its awakened energy and phenomenal movement toward 
its goal of destiny. 

It is well for those who are reading the marvellous 
record of China in transition to look into the secrets of 
the past greatness of the Chinese, and discover the philo- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

sophic, ethical, and social bases of such a prolonged, yet 
strangely unprogressive national existence. Such a study 
will help us also to understand the seeming mystery of 
China's readiness for the rapid evolutionary developments 
of the present. The surprising receptivity of a great 
people, noted for immemorial conservatism, will be more 
easily understood if we look carefully into the intellectual 
life, faulty though it may be in many respects, which 
lies back of it for long centuries past. 

Dr. Martin himself, in his capacity as a missionary 
and educator during sixty-two years of fruitful service 
in China, has been a stimulating factor in hastening and 
guiding the political, educational, and religious growth 
of the nation toward Western ideals. These studies in 
the lore of Old Cathay ought certainly to quicken our 
confidence that the, as yet, unwritten story of the New 
Cathay linked as it will be with the higher elements of 
modern, and we trust. Christian, civilization, presages a 
great and puissant nation holding in trust a sacred mis- 
sion for the uplift of the new-born East. 

James S. Dennis. 

February 4, 19 12. 



PREFACE 

^Cfir^BE Lore of Cathay," is an essential comple- 
I ment to " A Cycle of Cathay." The latter 

■- represents the active life of the Chinese as 
it appeared to the writer in the course of a long and 
varied experience. This book mirrors their intellectual 
life as it developed under investigations extending through 
many years of intimate association with Chinese scholars, 
and of identification with Chinese education. 

Its contents comprise the " Hanlin Papers," revised 
and enlarged by the addition of much new matter. Its 
materials have been drawn exclusively from native 
sources, and are the result of original research. The author 
has treated, with considerable detail, of subjects so diverse 
as Chinese education and Chinese alchemy; and he ven- 
tures to believe that he throws fresh light on some points 
of Oriental literature, science and philosophy ; and that he 
may fairly claim, as a field of his own discovery, the inter- 
national law and diplomacy of the ancient Chinese. 

In the San Kuo Chi it is laid down as a law of the 
national life, confirmed by history, that the Chinese Em- 
pire, when it has been long united, is sure to be divided; 
when it has been long divided, is sure to be reunited. 
Just now the centrifugal forces are portentously active. 
Should they eventuate in partition, that state of things 
could not be permanent, though it might accelerate the 
acquisition of our Western civilization by the people of 
China. Quickened into new life, they would be sure to 



2 PREFACE 

reconstruct the Empire and to take their place among the 
leading powers of the civilized world. 

While the Manchu rulers have made grudging conces- 
sions to superior force, they have always, with the ex- 
ception of Kuang Hsu, contrived to maintain a latent 
hostility in the minds of their people. That hostility has 
diminished — strange to say — with each defeat by foreign 
powers, and it almost disappeared during the reform 
movement under the young Emperor, which followed the 
war with Japan. 

To prevent the recurrence of outrages it is necessary 
to foster a fellow-feeling with the rest of the world. As 
Captain Mahan says : *' Toward Asia in its present con- 
dition Europe has learned that it has a community of 
interest that may be defined as the need of bringing the 
Asian peoples within the compass of the family of Chris- 
tian States. They will have to insist that currency be 
permitted to our ideas — liberty to exchange thought in 
Chinese territory with the individual Chinaman. The 
open door, both for commerce and for intellectual inter- 
action, should be our aim everywhere in China." 

One essential to this intellectual interaction is mutual 
intellectual comprehension. If China is to be a part of 
the family of civilized States — Chinese thought, the 
principles at the basis of Chinese history and life must 
be understood. It is with the hope that this may be 
furthered that " The Lore of Cathay " is offered to the 
Anglo-Saxon public. 

W. A. P. M. 

Peking, Julyj ist. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

[/The Awakening in China 7 

BOOK I 
CHINA'S CONTRIBUTION TO ARTS AND SCIENCES 

I. Chinese Discoveries 23 

11. Chinese Speculations in Philosophy and 

Science 33 

III. Alchemy in China; the Source of Chemistry . 44 

BOOK II 
CHINESE LITERATURE 

IV. Poets and Poetry of China 75 

V. The Confucian Apocrypha 87 

VI. Confucius and Plato — A Coincidence . . . 106 

VII. Chinese Prose Composition in 

VIII. Chinese Letter Writing 130 

IX. Chinese Fables 144 

X. Native Tracts of China 148 

BOOK III 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHINESE 
XI. The San Chiao or Three Religions of China . 165 
XII. The Ethical Philosophy of the Chinese . . 205 

3 



4 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XIII. Chinese Ideas of Inspiration 234 . 

XIV. Buddhism a Preparation for Christianity . . 249 y 
XV. The Worship of Ancestors in China . . . 264 

BOOK IV 
EDUCATION IN CHINA 

XVI. School and Family Training 281 

XVII. Civil Service Examinations ..... 308 
XVIII. The Imperial Academy 329 

XIX. An Old University in China 37^ 

BOOK V 

STUDIES IN CHINESE HISTORY 

XX. The Study of Chinese History .... 387 

XXI. The Tartars in Ancient China .... 409 

XXII. International Law in Ancient China , . . 427 

XXIII. Diplomacy in Ancient China 450 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Dr. W. A. p. Martin Frontispiece ^ 

FACING PAGES 

President Martin and Faculty of the Chinese Imperial Uni- 
versity i8 1/ 

Dr. Martin and some of his Students 34 ^'^ 

Shrine and Temple of Confucius 88 i^ 

The Temple of Heaven | ^ 

The Altar of Heaven . ) 

Arch and Temple of Confucius 200 v 

Gateway of Lama Temple 240 

Buddhist Monument 254 V 

The Imperial Ancestral Temple 274* 

The Watch-tower in Examination Grounds . 

Furnace for burning paper in Examination Grounds 

Row of Cells in Examination University . . . . 326 ''' 

The Imperial Lecture Room, Old University. 



[. . 314*^ 



373 ^ 
Prospect Hill where the last of the Mings hanged himself 



THE LORE OF CATHAY 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 

FOR a long time the giant of the East has been 
rubbing his eyes. Each colHsion with foreign 
powers has had the effect of making him more 
conscious of his helpless condition and more ready to 
open his lids to the light of a new day. 

Never was he more wide awake than during the few 
years following the war with Japan, when the young 
Emperor, Kuang Hsii, attempted to make his reign an 
era of reform. The counter-revolution brought about 
by the Empress Dowager,* and the cosmic shock by_ which 
it was succeeded, proved the strength and reality of the 
reform movement. So far from extinguishing that 
movement, the effect of this convulsion will be to wake 
it into fresh activity. The Chinese people may be ex- 
pected to welcome new ideas with more eagerness than 
ever before. 

This proposition will be received with distrust by some 
who are skeptical as to the doctrine of human progress. 
It will be questioned by others, who deride as visionary 
the efforts of Christian enterprise. Nor will it be readily 
admitted by that large class who are wont to regard the 
Chinese mind as hopelessly incrusted with the prejudices 
of antiquity. 

* Having treated that subject in " The Siege in Peking," it is 
unnecessary to enlarge upon it in this place. 

7 



8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

\ Never have a great people been more misunderstood. 
They are denounced as stolid, because we are not in pos- 
session of a medium sufficiently transparent to convey our 
ideas to them, or transmit theirs to us; and stigmatized 
as barbarians, because we want the breadth to comprehend 
a civilization different from our own. They are repre- 
sented as servile imitators, though they have borrowed 
less than any other people; as destitute of the inventive 
faculty, though the world is indebted to them for a long 
catalogue of the most useful discoveries ; and as clinging 
with unquestioning tenacity to a heritage of traditions, 
though they have passed through many and profound 
changes in the course of their history. \ 

Nothing has done so much to lower them in our esteem 
and to exclude them from our sympathies as the atrocities 
of the Boxer outbreak. That, however, was the effect of 
a sudden recoil, stirred up for political purposes by a 
usurping Regent and her Manchu agents. Foreigners 
themselves, they were jealous of anything that tends to 
disturb the repose of the Chinese mind, or to strengthen 
the foothold of other foreigners. Exasperated, too, by a 
series of encroachments on their territory, they gave way 
to a mad fury that proved contagious. <rBut if the reign 
of terror was the renovation of France, and the Sepoy 
mutiny the harbinger of better things for India, why 
may not this dreadful drama prove to be the birth-pangs 
of a new China ? - 

That China is not incapable of reformation, we shall 
show first by a glance at changes that passed over the 
national mind prior to the first war with England. We 
shall then pass in review the steps taken in the way of 
reform in the course of the next fifty years. Finally, we 
shall describe in outline, the reform movement under the 
Emperor, Kuang Hsii, which has more right than the 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 9 

Boxer craze to be accepted as the real attitude of the 
Chinese mind. 

The Chinese have not been stationary, as generally sup- 
posed, through the long past of their national life. The 
national mind has advanced from age to age with a stately 
march ; not indeed always in a direct course, but at each 
of its great epochs, recording, as we think, a decided gain ; 
like the dawn of an arctic morning, in which the first 
blush of the eastern sky disappears for many hours, only 
to be succeeded by a brighter glow, growing brighter yet, 
after each interval of darkness, as the time of sunrise 
approaches. 

The existence in such a country of such a thing as a 
national mind is itself an evidence of a susceptibility to 
change; and, at the same time, a guarantee for the com- 
parative stability of its institutions. It proves that China 
is not an immense congeries of polyps, each encased in 
his narrow cell, a workshop and a tomb, and all toil- 
ing on without the stimulus of common sympathy or 
mental reaction. It proves that China is not like Africa, 
and aboriginal America, or even like British India, an 
assemblage of tribes with little or no community of feel- 
ing. It is a unit, and through all its members there 
sweeps the mighty tide of a common life. 

In the progress of its enormous growth, it has ab- 
sorbed many a heterogeneous element, which has always 
been transformed into its own substance by an assimila- 
tive power that asserts the marvelous energy of the 
Chinese civilization. It has, too, undergone many modi- 
fications, in consequence of influences operating ab extra 
as well as from within; and though the process of trans- 
mission has often been slow, those influences have al- 
ways extended to the whole body. Within the bounds 
of China proper, there is no such thing as the waves of 



10 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Buddhism or Taoism being arrested at the confines of a 
particular province ; nor is there any district in which the 
pulsations from the great heart of the empire do not, by 
virtue of a common language and common feeling, meet 
with a prompt response. 

Yet the existence of this oneness and sympathy, — this 
nationality of mind, which brings modifications on a vast 
scale within the range of possibility, necessarily inter- 
poses an obstacle in the way of their speedy consumma- 
tion. Planted on the deep foundations of antiquity, ex- 
tending over so wide an area, and proudly conscious of its 
own greatness, its very inertia is opposed to change. In 
China, accordingly, great revolutions, whether political, 
religious, or intellectual, have always been slow of ac- 
complishment. Compared with the facility with which 
these are brought about in some Occidental countries, 
they resemble the slow revolution of those huge planets 
on the outskirts of the solar system, which require more 
than the period of a human life to make the circuit of the 
sun, while the little planet Mercury wheels round the 
center once in three months. 

Great dynastic changes, involving as they do a period 
of disintegration, and another of reconstruction, have 
usually occupied from one to three generations, while the 
growth of those grand revolutions, which resulted in the 
ascendency of a religion or a philosophy, must be reck- 
oned by centuries. 

, A brief review of some of the more remarkable changes 
that have occurred in the progress of Chinese civilization, 
will enable us better to understand the nature of the in- 
tellectual movement now going on. 

To begin with the development of political ideas. In- 
stead of being wedded to a uniform system of despotic 
government^ the Chinese have lived under as many forms 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA ii 

of government as ancient Rome or modern France. 
While the Romans passed under their kings, consuls, and 
emperors, the Chinese had their tis, their wangs, and 
their huang tis. And as France has passed through the 
various phases of a feudal and centralized monarchy, a 
military despotism, and a republic, so China exhibits an 
equal variety in the forms of her civil government. 

When the hand of history first lifts the curtain, two 
thousand years before the Christian era, it discloses to 
us an elective monarchy, in which the voice of the peo- 
ple was admitted to express the will of Heaven. Thus, 
Yao, the model monarch of antiquity, was raised to the 
throne by the voice of the nobles, in lieu of his elder 
brother, who was set aside on account of his disorderly 
life. Yao, in turn, set aside his own son, and called on 
the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen. 
Again, Shun, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the 
" yellow " to an able minister, the great Yu. 

Yu, though a good sovereign, departed from these illus- 
trious precedents, and incurred the censure of " convert- 
ing the empire into a family estate." The hereditary 
principle became fixed. Branches of the imperial family 
were assigned portions of the empire, and their descend- 
ants succeeding to their principalities, the feudal system 
was confirmed. 

This, in China, is the classical form of government, but 
it was overthrown completely two thousand years ago, 
by one of the most sweeping revolutions on the records 
of history. Since that date, China has been a consoli- 
dated monarchy, living in complete isolation; without 
neighbors, and without a conception of international inter- 
course. This has been a fruitful source of conflict with 
the great nations of the West and East. 

Under the dynasty of Han, about the commencement 



12 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

of the Christian era, a still more important modification 
was introduced into the constitution of the empire — viz., 
a democratic element, in virtue of which appointments to 
office were not left to the caprice of the sovereign and 
his favorites. This consisted in testing the capacity of 
candidates by a literary examination; and it operated so 
well that it was not only adopted but greatly improved 
by succeeding dynasties, and continues in force at the 
present day. The Americans would as soon surrender 
their ballot-box, as the Chinese that noble system of lit- 
erary competition, which makes public office the reward 
of scholarship, and gives every man an opportunity of 
elevating himself by his own exertions. 

Nor are the Chinese less familiar with the idea of 
change in the region of religious thought. Three systems 
of religion have appeared on the arena of the empire, and 
struggled for ascendency since the sixth century before 
the Christian era. Confucianism was persecuted under 
the dynasty of Ch'in ; and Taoism and Buddhism alter- 
nately persecuting and persecuted, kept up a conflict for 
ages, each in turn seating its own disciples on the throne 
of the empire. The last of these is of foreign origin; 
and its universal prevalence does much to reconcile the 
people to the introduction of religious ideas from abroad ; 
while it stands forth as a visible proof of the possibility 
of converting the Chinese to a foreign creed. A leading 
statesman* of China has made use of this as an argu- 
ment to show that the emperor should not object to the 
propagation of Christianity. " From the time of Ch'in 
and Han," he says, "the doctrines of Confucius began 
to be obscured, and the religion of Buddha spread. Now 
Buddhism originated in India, but many of the Hindus 
have renounced Buddhism and embraced Mohammedan- 

♦Tseng Kuo Fan, viceroy of Nanking. 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 13 

ism. The Roman Catholic faith originated in the West, 
but some nations of the West have adopted Protestantism, 
and set themselves in opposition to the faith of Rome. 
Whence we see that other rehgions rise and fall from 
age to age, but the doctrine of Confucius survives, un- 
impaired throughout all ages." The writer is careful to 
disavow any sympathy for Christianity, and he by no 
means recommends its adoption; but he wishes to assure 
His Majesty that there is no serious evil to be appre- 
hended even if Christianity should succeed in supplanting 
Buddhism, as long as the people adhere to the cardinal 
doctrines of their ancient sage. It is a great thing for the 
leading minds to acknowledge the possibility of a change 
even in this hypothetical form. 

Aside from these religious revolutions, and altogether 
distinct from them, are several periods of intellectual 
awakening, that constitute marked epochs in the history 
of literature. 

The first of these was occasioned by the teachings of 
Confucius. Another occurred in the time of Mencius, 
a century later, when the ethical basis of the school under- 
went a searching revision, the great question of the origi- 
nal goodness or depravity of human nature being dis- 
cussed with acuteness and power. A third and more 
powerful awakening took place, when the classic books 
which Lu Cheng had burned, rose, phoenix-like, from their 
ashes, or to speak more correctly, issued, Minerva-like, 
from the retentive brain of those venerable scholars who 
had committed them to memory in their early boyhood. 

This was the age of criticism; the very circumstances 
which roused the national mind to activity, directed its 
efforts to the settlement of the text of their ancient 
records. But it did not stop here. Slips of bamboo, and 
tablets of wood, the clumsy materials of ancient books, 



14 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

gave place to linen, silk, and paper. The convenience 
and elegance of the material contributed to multiply books 
and to stimulate literary labor. 

But the grandest of all the revivals of learning, was, 
as might be expected, that which ensued on the discovery 
of the art of printing. In the period above referred to, 
about A. D. 177, the revised text of the sacred books was 
engraved on tablets of stone, by Imperial order, as a pre- 
caution to secure it against the danger of another con- 
flagration. Impressions must have been taken from these, 
and the art of printing thus practiced to a limited ex- 
tent at that early date; but it was not till the eighth cen- 
tury that it came into general use for the manufacture of 
books. 

It was not so much the augmented rate of production 
that marked this epoch, as the improved character of its 
original literature. This was eminently the age of po- 
etry ; when Li Tai Po, and Tu Fu, and a whole constella- 
tion of lesser lights rose above the horizon. The Poems 
of T'ang are still recognized as forming the text-books 
of standard poetry. 

This period was succeeded by another in the reign of 
the Sung dynasty (960-1279), when the mind of China 
exhibited itself in a new development. It became seized 
with a mania for philosophical speculation, and grap- 
pled with the deepest questions of ontology. Choutze, 
Chengtze, and, above all, the famous Chu Hsi, distin- 
guished themselves by the penetrating subtlety and the 
daring freedom of their inquiries. Professing to eluci- 
date the ancient philosophy, they in reality founded a new 
one — a school of pantheistic materialism, which has con- 
tinued dominant to the present hour. 

The last two dynasties have not been unfruitful in the 
products of the intellect ; indeed, there seems to be no 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 15 

end or abatement to the teeming fertility of the Chinese 
mind. Less daringly original than in the preceding 
period, it has yet, under each of these dynasties, appeared 
in a new style — the writers of the Ming being distin- 
guished for masculine energy of expression, and those of 
the Ta Ch'ing for graceful elegance.^. ' 

Enough has been said to show that the Chinese have 
not maintained through all the ages that character of 
cast-iron uniformity so generally ascribed to them. 
Worshipers of antiquity, they certainly are, and strongly 
conservative in their mental tendencies; but they have 
not been content, as is too commonly supposed, to hand 
down from the earliest times a small stock of crystallized 
ideas without increase or modification. The germs of 
their civilization, like those of any civilization worth pre- 
serving, are not precious stones to be kept in a casket, 
but seeds to be cultivated and improved, r In fact, modi- 
fications have taken place on an extensive scale, foreign 
elements have from time to time been engrafted on the 
native root, and the native scholar, as he follows back 
the pathway of history, fails to discover anything like 
uniformity or constancy, except in a few of the mOvSt 
fundamental principles. The doctrine of filial piety, car- 
ried to the point of religious devotion, extends like a 
golden thread through all the ages, as the foundation of 
family ties and social order; while the principle of the 
divine origin of government, administered by one man 
as the representative of Heaven, and modified by the 
corresponding doctrine that the will of Heaven is ex- 
pressed in the will of the people, is found alike in every 
period, as the basis of their civil institutions. 

Though not so much given to change as their more 
mercurial antipodes, it is still true that the constant 
factors of their civilization have been few, and the varia- 



i6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

ble ones many. Bold innovations and radical revolutions 
rise to view all along in the retrospect of their far-reach- 
ing past, and prepare them to anticipate the same for the 
future. With such antecedents, and such a character for 
intellectual activity, it would be next to impossible that 
they should not be profoundly affected by their contacts 
and collisions with the civilization of Christendom. 

In point of fact the impression was profound, though 
it was not immediately apparent. 1 For over half a cen- 
tury the West had been acting on China by the combined 
influence of its arms, its commerce, its religion, and its 
science. Some of these influences commenced to operate 
at a much earlier date, and their effects were by no means 
insignificant. But of late years all of them have been 
combined with an oxyhydrogen blow-pipe intensity, that 
one would think sufficient to melt a mountain of ada- 
mant. They could not, in the nature of things, have been 
brought to bear on China so effectively at any earlier 
period on account of her geographical isolation. The na- 
tions of the West were too remote to cause solicitude ; but 
when steamships and the cutting of the Isthmus brought 
them nearer, and when in two wars they displayed their 
ability to beat her in every battle, they taught her a les- 
son, without which all attempts to benefit the Chinese 
must have proved like irrigating the side of a mountain 
by projecting water from its base. 

The effect was immediate. The Chinese were for the 
first time convinced that they had something to learn. 
Within less than a year from the close of hostilities in 
i860, large bodies of Chinese troops might have been seen 
learning foreign tactics under foreign drill-masters, on 
the very battle grounds where they had been defeated. 
Arsenals, well supplied with machinery from foreign 
countries, were put in operation at four important points, 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 17 

and Navy Yards were established at two principal sea- 
ports, where native mechanics were taught the construc- 
tion of steam gun-boats. 

Such, indeed, was their proficiency in the arts of war, 
that they supposed themselves able to cope with a first- 
class power, until the war with Japan dispelled the illu- 
sion. 

Nor was education in other lines wholly neglected. A 
school for the training of interpreters was opened in Can- 
ton, and a similar school established in the Capital. It is 
significant of the animus of the ruling race that in both 
schools the students were exclusively drawn from the 
Tartar tribes, or from Chinese whose famiUes had been 
adopted into the Manchu race in the age of the conquest. 
The government was not desirous of extending the bene- 
fits of the new education to its (Chinese subjects. One 
Manchu statesman there was, with sounder views and 
greater breadth — Wen Hsiang, the enlightened chief of 
the Board of Foreign Affairs. He induced the throne to 
open the doors of the College to Chinese who were high- 
class graduates in letters; but the haughty graduates de- 
clined to enter. Wojin, the Emperor's teacher, de- 
nounced the proposal to have her learned doctors sit at 
the feet of foreigners as derogatory to the dignity of 
China. Being at the head of the Imperial Academy, he 
encouraged the Hanlins in their opposition to such an 
innovation. Unable to reach the higher literati, Wen 
Hsiang had to content himself with recruits from lower 
grades. The number of scholarships was raised from 
thirty to one hundred and twenty, and\the curriculum en- 
larged to embrace a liberal course in sciences and arts, 
as well as languages. The Imperial T'ung Wen College 
became an important factor in helping forward the cause 
of progress.j 



i« THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Some of its students found employment in schools and 
arsenals. Many of them were attached to embassies in 
foreign parts, and two of them had the distinguished 
honor of becoming tutors in English to His Majesty, the 
Emperor, then in his early minority. Instead of printed 
books, they were required to place in the hands of their 
Imperial pupil, a series of lessons written out in beauti- 
ful manuscript. These they always brought to me to be 
sure that they were correct. I may here mention that 
my first appointment in connection with the T'ung Wen 
College, was the charge of a class of boys, ten in number, 
who were studying English. After a short time, I pro- 
posed to give up the charge. An aged minister, who had 
the oversight of the school, inquiring my reason for re- 
signing, I told him I thought the business too small 
for me. 

" Don't call it small," he said, " some of your students 
may yet become teachers of the Emperor." 

Needless to say, this argument proved conclusive; not 
only was his prophesy with reference to the students ful- 
filled, a prediction which he had a good deal to do in 
fulfilling, but, in the further enlargement of the institu- 
tion, I was appointed to the Presidency in connection with 
the Chair of International Law, a two-fold position, which 
I continued to hold for twenty-five years, until ill-health 
compelled my resignation. 

Our students, who went abroad in connection with em- 
bassies, were some of them interpreters, some secretaries, 
some consuls and vice-consuls, while one or two even rose 
to the dignity of minister plenipotentiary: notably was 
this the case with Mr. Ching Chang,* late minister to 
France. 

* The late Marquis Tseng, Minister to England, though not a 
student of the College, took private lessons from me, and always 
manifested towards me the respect due to a teacher. 



THE AWAKENING IN CHINA 19 

^ The embassies themselves must not be overlooked as 
an educational agency. Each minister and his suite re- 
garded themselves as on a mission of exploration. Some- 
times the minister embodied his observations in a set of 
volumes. More frequently their secretaries published an 
account of their travels. These publications, not being 
pigeon-holed like official reports, had the effect of doing 
much to awaken the reading class. 

One of the most remarkable enterprises of that age was 
the educational mission originated by Mr. Yung Wing, 
a graduate and doctor of laws of Yale University. By 
him and his successors, about three hundred picked youth 
were led to Hartford for training in every branch of 
knowledge that could make them useful to their country. 
The mission was, as I have elsewhere stated, finally re- 
called, because it was thought these young men were 
learning too much. 

The efforts hitherto made in this direction, were mainly 
official, and intended for the use of the Government. 
They were feeble in comparison with the strength of the 
movement which followed on the war with Japan. The 
first effect of defeat was to excite earnest inquiry as to 
the cause of China's humiliation. Those haughty schol- 
ars, the members of the Hanlin, who had disdained to 
enter the T'ung Wen College, now became convinced that 
the Japanese were victorious because a new education had 
supplied them with new sources of power. They began 
the organization of reform clubs in the capital and 
throughout the empire, in many places. They sought the 
advice of missionaries, such as Dr. Allen, the Rev. Tim- 
othy Richard, and the Rev. Gilbert Reid. They were en- 
couraged by Viceroys and Governors. The Great Vice- 
roy, Chang Chih Tung published a book to stimulate the 
movement, showing that a change of base for the educa- 
tional system is " China's Only Hope." 3 



20 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In 1897, the eminent Cantonese scholar, Kang Yii Wei, 
went to the capital to compete for a place in the Imperial 
Academy. He won for himself a more distinguished 
position by getting the ear of the Emperor. Deeply 
penetrated with the conviction that China's safety re- 
quired her to imitate the example of Japan, he fired the 
mind of the Emperor with enthusiasm to be the leader of 
his people in the path of reform. 

The Emperor issued a series of decrees, all commend- 
ing themselves to the judgment of reasonable men, but 
fraught with the spirit of innovation. He proposed, in- 
stead of choosing the employees of the government as the 
result of a competition in ornamental handwriting and 
verse making, to have them examined in sciences and 
practical arts. With this in view, he ordered the estab- 
lishment of common schools, for which the idol temples 
in the provinces were to be thrown open, an act regarded 
by his people as equivalent to confiscation. He also or- 
dered the creation of upper schools and colleges in the 
provinces, and established a University in the capital, 
which should gather in the provincial graduates and train 
them for the service of the state. The writer was called 
to the Presidency of this institution. It had been in op- 
eration for two years with a corps of ten foreign profes- 
sors, and twelve native assistants, mostly Christian grad- 
uates of mission schools, when its operations were brought 
to a standstill by the Boxer outbreak. 

That temporary madness which showed itself in the 
burning of the Hanlin Library, the destruction by fire of 
the richest sections of the capital, and the destruction 
by water of the library of our University, is sure to have 
the effect of giving a fresh impetus to the cause of edu- 
cational reform, i 



BOOK I 

China's Contribution to Arts and 
Sciences 



CHINESE DISCOVERIES 

THAT a people whose history runs back almost as 
far as that of Egypt, and whose continuity has 
been far less disturbed by foreign conquest, 
should hit on many useful discoveries is not to be won^ 
dered at. The wonder is that so little pains have been 
taken to point out the extent of our indebtedness to the 
ancient civilization of the Far East. In many instances 
our obligations can be proven. In others, where the evi- 
dence is not conclusive, the fact of priority creates a pre- 
sumption in favor of the Chinese. The channel of trans- 
mission may not be easy to detect ; but there is no doubt 
that such existed even prior to the records of history, 
just as the ocean throbs with a common pulse, and secret 
currents connect its distant shores. 

It might be difficult to show that the Chinese are distin- 
guished for inventive talent, but intelligent and practical 
as they are, it is inevitable that in the course of ages 
they should accumulate a considerable stock of arts and 
of the rudiments of science. They are not wanting in 
originality, the political and social system under which 
we meet them at the dawn of history is obviously of 
native origin, and the traveler even at the present day is 
struck by the peculiar methods of the Chinese in much 
that goes to make up their material civilization. 

We shall call attention chiefly (but not exclusively), to 
such discoveries and inventions as have made their way 
to the western world. 

23 



24 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

The author of the Liao Chai, a popular story book 
compiled about two centuries ago, describes a tube into 
which a message might be spoken and conveyed to a dis- 
tant place, when on the removal of a seal the words 
become audible. I am not going to champion Chiang 
Hsien-sheng against Mr. Edison, as the inventor of a pho- 
nograph. His specifications are too few and vague to 
pass muster in our patent office. Like many anticipa- 
tory hints to be found in the literature of other countries 
this fanciful outline seems rather' to indicate the con- 
sciousness of a want than to show the way in which the 
problem was to be solved. 

Discarding fancy, we shall confine ourselves to solid 
ground, and after vindicating for the Chinese the honor 
of discovery in two or three important arts, we shall indi- 
cate in a few words what they have done in the less famil- 
iar domain of science. 

L I. Gunpowder, which Sir James Mackintosh 
brackets together with printing as securing our civilization 
against another irruption of barbarians, is, in my opinion, 
to be set to the credit of the Chinese. The honor is con- 
tested by English, German, Arab and Hindu; nor is it 
impossible that the discovery may have been made inde- 
pendently by each. Its ingredients, sulphur, nitre and 
carbon, were in constant use by alchemists, and it was 
inevitable that the explosive force of the compound should 
be found out if only by accident — especially as no fixed 
proportion is required. The first to meet with this happy 
accident would be the Chinese, who were the first experi- 
menters in the field of alchemy.* 

The pretentions of Schwartz and Roger Bacon need not 
be discussed on account of their comparatively recent 
date. As for the Arabs, they were transmitters, not 
* See chapter IH. 



CHINESE DISCOVERIES 25 

inventors. The only people who can seriously compete 
with the Chinese are the Hindus. Their knowledge of 
gunpowder is certainly of great antiquity, but their 
ancient dates are difficult to fix, and the balance of evi- 
dence as to priority appears to be in favor of China. 

One of the weightiest documents bearing on the ques- 
tion is a paper set for a metropolitan examination abouf 
twenty years ago. The answers given by the candidates 
would be of little worth ; but the facts stated or assumed 
in the questions are of great value, emanating as they do 
from the chief examiner, one of the most learned men in 
the Empire. 

" Fire-arms began with the use of rockets in the dy- 
nasty of Chou (b. c. 1122-255) — in what book do we 
first meet with the word p'ao, now used for cannon ? " 

" Is the defense of Kai Feng Fu against the Mongols 
(1232) the first recorded use of cannon? " 

" The Sung dynasty (a. d. 960-1278) had several vari- 
eties of small guns — what were their advantages ? " 

These three questions all relate to fire-arms. They 
imply an explosive, but it does not follow that such ex- 
plosive was always employed to discharge projectiles. 
Indeed the rockets referred to can scarcely be reckoned 
as projectiles, being used for signals or for festive display, 
rather than as weapons of war. The famous siege re- 
ferred to in the second question was more than a hun- 
dred years earlier than the first incontestable use of 
cannon in Europe (1338). 

If we turn to the Ko Chieh Ching Yuan, " The Mirror 
of Research ", the best Chinese authority on the subject 
of invention, we obtain a little light on the transition from 
signal rockets to fire-arms properly so-called. ThQ 



26 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

author cites an ancient book to the effect that in 998 a. d. 
one Tang Fu produced a rocket of a new style having a 
head of iron, — proof that it was not intended for a mere 
signal or a feu de joie. He also cites another book which 
relates that in a. d. 1131 a piratical fleet on the River 
Yangtze was destroyed by a *' thunder bomb ", secretly 
sent among the ships. The bomb made of paper was 
filled, he says, with sulphur and quicklime. As it rose to 
the sky with a report like thunder, it must have been 
launched from a mortar by the force of gunpowder. 

He further quotes a statement that at a date not men- 
tioned, but earlier than the defense of Kai Feng Fu the 
walls of Hsi An, the ancient capital, were provided with 
cannon which went off with a report that could be heard 
thirty miles and spread flames over half an acre. The 
balls or bombs for these guns were made of iron, but 
porcelain was also used. 

Goubel, cited by Pauthier, says that cannon throwing 
stones were used in the defense of T'ai Yuan, a. d., y6y, 
and that mines were employed. He says no explosive is 
mentioned by the native author, its existence being taken 
as well-known. 

2. China's claim to the discovery of the Mariner's 
Compass is uncontested. The magnet was known at an 
early epoch to both Greeks and Egyptians ; the former 
gave it its name, and the latter, according to Plutarch, 
employed it as a symbol for a good man who not only 
attracts others but possesses the power of imparting his 
virtues. Yet the first to observe its directive properties 
were the Chinese. By them the polarity of the needle 
was utilized long before the Christian era. Some of 
their books assert that it was used to guide war-chariots 
across a desert as early as 2600 b. c, but the war is 
legendary and the assertion groundless. More within 



CHINESE DISCOVERIES 27 

range is tKeir unvarying statement, that magnetic needles 
were given to ambassadors from a southern country to 
enable them to find their way home, iioo b. c. Those 
ambassadors came by land, and from its use in their 
vehicles the compass came to be described as Chih nan 
chu, a ''South-pointing chariot." A curious illustration 
of that primitive application of the needle may be seen any 
day in a small compass suspended in the sedan or cart of 
a Mandarin. 

The use of the needle at sea follows as a matter of 
course. The Chinese employed it in coasting voyages as 
early as the fifth century a. d.^ and it is probable that 
their junks as well as their land carriages were provided 
with it long before that date. Its use was known in 
Europe as early as the twelfth century, and possibly much 
earlier, the crusades, which mingled all nations, having 
served to propagate the arts of the East — but It was slow 
in coming into vogue. In the bold hands of Columbus 
three centuries later it pointed the way to a new world. 
Yet Vasco da Gama seems to have made little or no use of 
it in his voyage to India in 1497, which was in fact a 
coasting voyage all the way. Camoens In his poetical 
narrative Os Lnsiadas, though he praises the astrolabe 
and is ever on the alert for things marvellous and strange, 
makes no allusion to the needle. 

3. That Gutenberg's invention of printing was 
prompted by the knowledge that something similar existed 
in China is next to certain. For seven hundred years 
the art had been practiced there, not in secret as he and 
Faustus practiced it, but as a great popular industry. 
Its origin is remarkable. A tyrant, determined to uproot 
the principles of Confucius, burned the books of the Sage. 
They were restored partly from memory, partly from im- 
perfect copies found hidden in the wall of a house. The 



28 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Emperor Tal Tsung, (a. d. (^2"]^ resolved that the sacred 
inheritance should never again be exposed to destruction 
by fire, caused the books to be engraved on stone. That 
stone library is still extant. A hundred and seventy slabs 
of granite bearing on their faces the text of the thirteen 
classics may still be seen at Hsi An Fu, and a modem imi- 
tation of it stands in the old Confucian University at 
Peking. 

No sooner was that Imperial edition completed than 
the idea occurred of making it accessible to scholars in 
all parts of the country by means of rubbings. That was 
printing. Nor in China has the form of that art greatly 
changed in the lapse of a thousand years. Wood has 
been substituted for stone and relievo for intaglio, mak- 
ing the page white instead of black, but the impressions 
are still rubbings, made with a soft brush and without the 
use of a press. 

From the invention of block printing it was not long 
until attempts were made to print with divisible type, but 
they failed to supersede the primitive method, the Chinese 
not having hit on that happy alloy known as " printers' 
metal." It is not necessary to suppose that Chinese type 
of wood, copper or terra cotta found their way to May- 
ence ; the smallest fragment of printed paper carried in a 
China vase or roll of silk would be sufficient to suggest 
the whole art to a mind like that of Gutenberg. 

4. The art of making porcelain is so obviously Chi- 
nese in its origin that porcelain continues to bear the 
name of China ware. 

5. The same may be said of the manufacture of silk. 
The name is somewhat disguised, but it is obviously de- 
rived from Seres the Latin for Chinese, through the ad- 
jective sericum, which dropping the fi'nal syllable becomes 
^m^-silk, i. e., China stuff. I need not push the argument 



CHINESE DISCOVERIES 29 

so far as to assert that ser is Chinese for silkworm ; 
though that derivation is not without plausibiHty. In 
the making of paper, not only were the Chinese far in 
advance of us — they preceded us in the special art of pro- 
ducing it from wood pulp. Paper was invented by China 
about the beginning of the Christian era; but for many 
centuries preceding their books were engraved on slips of 
bamboo with the point of a stile. 

It is a curious fact that arts originating in China seem 
to require transplanting in order to attain a higher de- 
velopment. Witness the marvellous improvements made 
in the application of gunpowder, printing and the mari- 
ner's compass. This may be due to an inborn conservatism 
which makes the Chinese reluctant to alter the methods 
approved by their fathers. 

11. The same observation may be made in regard to 
their essays in the field of science. Ideas which in their 
native soil have remained stunted and deformed yield a 
rich fruitage under a more genial sky. 

1. Notably is this the case with Alchemy,* which in 
the western world has expanded into a vast body of sci- 
ence which, in no mean sense, fulfils its promise of trans- 
muting baser elements into gold. In its native soil it con- 
tinues to be an occult art laden with all the superstitions 
of the middle ages. 

There is no other science for which we are indebted 
to China, but there are many in which the Chinese made 
a beginning at an epoch when Europe was still in a state 
of barbarism. 

2. Astronomy. In this they made a good beginning 
twenty-two centuries before Christ. They had an astro- 
nomical board with regular professors, two of whom were 
put to death for failing, as some think, to foretell an 

* See chap. III. 



30 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

eclipse of the sun. Others, however, suppose that their 
offense was faihng to solemnize the event with proper 
rites. 

At that epoch they had fixed the length of the year 
more exactly than it was fixed by the Romans in the time 
of Numa. In their later astronomy Indian and Babylonian 
influences are conspicuous and we are unable to assign to 
them any credit beyond that of being good observers. 

3. Mathematics. Decimal Arithmetic, we are told, 
was brought to Europe by the Arabs, along with what we 
still call the Arabic figures. That the Arabs obtained 
it from India requires no demonstration ; but did it origi- 
nate in India ? Whether it passed from China to India or 
vice versa is not easy to determine. It is not very likely, 
however, that the Chinese would borrow it as early as 
2600 B. c.^ when their chronological computation was 
adopted — a system in which it is manifestly involved. 
Their oldest arithmetic, the Chou Peij proceeds upon it, 
and that dates, in part at least, from the Chou dynasty, 
whose name it bears, 1125 b. c. 

Not a little remarkable is it that this venerable book 
contains a treatise on right-angled triangles, bearing the 
name of Chou Kung, the founder of the House of Chou. 
Trigonometry as it appeared in Europe is ascribed to the 
Hindus, but with them it dates from the Greek invasion, 
having been developed from the Geometry of the Greeks. 
Of Algebra the Chinese possess an original form called 
Tien Yuan, which though not found in any book earlier 
than A. D. 1247, gives signs of being of indigenous 
growth. The words Tien and Yuan are equivalent to x 
and y signs for unknown quantities. 

4. Physics. Ether, that mysterious substance which 
of late has forced itself on the attention of our 
philosophers as a necessary postulate, was known to the 



CHINESE DISCOVERIES 31 

Chinese a thousand years ago. It is, says Professor 
Lodge, " The simplest conception of the Universe that has 
yet occurred to the mind of man — one continuous sub- 
stance filling all space, which can vibrate as light, which 
can be parted into positive and negative electricity, which 
in whirls or vortices constitutes matter, and which trans- 
mits by continuity, not by impact, every action and re- 
action of which matter is capable — this is the modern 
view of ether and its functions." 

This conception, as I shall show in the next chapter, 
is not new to the philosophers of China. How early it 
appeared there it is not easy to affirm — perhaps eleven 
centuries before our era, when the earliest speculations on 
the forces of nature were embodied in the / Ching, or 
" Book of Changes." It is found as a full-fledged doc- 
trine in several writers of the eleventh century of our era, 
who not only speak of an ethereal medium, but ascribe to 
it all the properties above enumerated, except that of pro- 
ducing electricity. 

The word Ether is Greek, but our scientific use of it is 
essentially Chinese. That we borrowed the idea from 
China I will not assert, but it is easy to point out a way 
by which it might have passed into Europe. The author 
of the modern theory of ether is Rene Descartes. Edu- 
cated at the Jesuit Seminary of La Fleche in France, who 
can prove that he did not there meet with fragments of 
Chinese philosophy in the writings of Jesuit missionaries ? 

5. If the Chinese had the Cartesian philosophy before 
Descartes, it is equally true that they understood the 
Baconian method before Bacon. They knew the doctrine 
only to reject it, as did Descartes at a later date. Even 
such general ideas as that of Biological Evolution, and 
that of the conservation of energy, they appear to have 
apprehended with great clearness, but they never took the 



32 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

trouble to fortify them by the laborious process of sys- 
tematic induction. Says Mencius, " The study of nature 
has for its object to get at the causes of things. In causes 
the ground principle is advantage. Tho' heaven is high, 
and sun and stars are far away, if we could find out the 
causes of their phenomena, we might sit still and calculate 
the solstice of a thousand years." 

In this remarkable speech uttered 400 b. c. he shows 
that he knew how to set about the study of nature. It 
might perhaps be going too far to affirm, that in speaking 
of " advantage " as a fundamental principle in natural 
causes, he anticipated the author of The Origin of 
Species ; yet this obscure hint, if followed up, might have 
led to Darwin's doctrine. 

As most of the points under this last head are treated 
in the next chapter, I bring the enumeration to a close by 
inquiring why the Chinese failed to profit by their discov- 
eries? The answer is brief but decided: In the arts, the 
slavish habit of following in the footsteps of their 
fathers acted as a bar to improvement. In the sciences, 
progress was rendered impossible by a system of state 
education which made the ancient classics the only basis 
of public instruction. 



II 

CHINESE SPECULATION IN PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

THE term speculative philosophy* is a little hazy ; 
perhaps, however, not more so than the thing 
indicated. It represents an early stage of 
thought prior to the rise of physical science — may we 
not add prior to, and for the most part in neglect of, that 
logic whose office it is to analyze the process of reasoning 
and to fix the limits of knowledge? 

Irregular and haphazard as it has shown itself in most 
countries, it is not inaptly described by the word specu- 
lation, as understood in business transactions. Why is it 
that the speculator in the stock market may, as by the cast 
bf a die, achieve fortune or provoke ruin? Is it not 
because the unknown and the variable are elements that 
elude his grasp? Yet the element of uncertainty is pre- 
cisely that which contributes most to the fascination of his 
ventures. Has it not been the same with most of those 
early thinkers who have undertaken to explain the 
mystery of existence? 

When the pole of which they are in search is hedged 
about by frozen seas, what wonder if their happiest efforts 
have not been rewarded by complete success ? Yet has the 
pursuit of truth in those regions and in all ages been 
justly regarded as the most ennobling occupation of the 
human mind. Nor has it been barren of results. Would 

* This chapter is included under the head of Science, notwith- 
standing the word Philosophy in its title, because it deals chiefly 
with the study of nature. 

33 



34 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

it not be a surprise to find that Chinese explorers in 
these high latitudes have planted their standard nearer to 
the pole than those of most other nations? 

To show what they have accomplished, I shall not deem 
it necessary to trace their philosophy, even in outline, 
from the dawn of speculation, but shall select a period 
when their speculative thought was most active and when 
the now dominant philosophy was formulated. Of the 
forty centuries included in the records of the Chinese 
Empire, there is one century, and no other, that can be 
selected as preeminently the age of philosophy. This was 
at the beginning of the Sung dynasty (1020 to 1120 a. d.), 
when gross darkness brooded over Europe and when the 
western world was convulsed by the Crusades. Earlier 
dynasties had been distinguished by various forms of in- 
tellectual activity, — one by the invention of poHtical sys- 
tems, one by historical writings, one for poetry and the 
drama, etc., — but not until this epoch did the Chinese 
mind evince a disposition to question everything in heaven 
and earth. In the work of setting anew the foundations of 
faith and knowledge, five men took the lead, whose family 
names (two being brothers) fall curiously into an allitera- 
tive line of four syllables, — Chou, Chang, Cheng, Chu, — 
all so distinguished that they may be compared with a 
Pleiad cluster, a constellation (and are there not many 
such?) whose light has not yet reached our shores. The 
last named is by far the most celebrated. Not more origi- 
nal than the others, he combined the qualities of a labori- 
ous scholar and an acute thinker, and knew how to gather 
the scattered rays of his predecessors into a focus. 
Though shining in part by borrowed light, Chu Hsi looms 
up like a pharos, taking (after Confucius and Mencius) 
the third place among the great teachers of the Chinese 
people. All five were Confucian scholars, but there can 




DR. MARTIN AND SOME OF HIS STUDENTS 



CHINESE SPECULATION 35 

be no doubt that their mental activity was stimulated and 
its direction determined by the speculations of Buddhist 
and Taoist writers. Their writings derive immense im- 
portance from the fact that for five hundred years, since 
the publication by imperial authority of the great Ency- 
clopcedia of Philosophy, they have been accepted by the 
government as the standard of orthodoxy to which all 
who aspire to the honors of the civil-service examinations 
are expected to conform. Their views are therefore to be 
taken as the views of the educated men of the China of 
to-day. 

In their mode of philosophizing they resemble Des- 
cartes more than Bacon. Their method is a priori^ and, 
like the great Frenchman who had read Bacon and re- 
jected his doctrine, they adopted theirs, not through ig- 
norance of the experimental method, but from choice. 
Confucius himself had laid down the maxim that " knowl- 
edge comes from the study of things," a maxim which 
seems as much out of place in his pages as that fine 
aphorism which sets forth the value of experiment does 
in those of Plato : ^MTt^tpioc itoiei rov ai&va -^ju&v nopeve- 
oBai Kara zsxvrjy aitupia dk Kara, rvx^y* 

The Chinese assert that their sage wrote a treatise on 
the experimental study of nature, but that it was lost, and 
this fact they ofifer as an excuse for the backwardness of 
their country in that department of science. Descartes's 
preference for the deductive method sprang from his 
mathematical genius. On the part of the Chinese it was 
due to a desire to follow what they considered the order 
of nature. Both esteemed it most rational to do as Stan- 
ley did in exploring the Congo — to strike the stream at its 

* Experiment (or experience, for in Greek as in French the 
word means both) causes the world to go forward in a scientific 
way; the want of it, in a haphazard manner. — Gorgias. 



36 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

head and follow it down to the sea — rather than witK 
Bacon to enter the mouth and creep slowly upward 
against the current. Which is the more daring feat, and 
which the more certain method, needs not to be pointed 
out. To compare the two methods and define the province 
of each, does not belong to our present theme. Suffice it 
to say that the champions of the one not infrequently 
made use of the other. When the Baconian got hold of a 
great principle, he did not fail to deduce its consequences ; 
nor, on the other hand, did a Cartesian neglect to appeal 
to experiment. With the former experiment preceded 
discovery; with the latter it was employed to confirm 
conclusions. 

Practical as the Chinese mind confessedly is, it is not 
a little remarkable that in the study of nature Chinese 
philosophers have never made extensive use of the in- 
ductive method. That they have not been unacquainted 
with it is evident from the following questions and 
answers found in the writings of the brothers Cheng: 

" One asked whether, to arrive at a knowledge of na- 
ture, it is necessary to investigate each particular object ; 
or may not some one thing be seized upon from which 
the knowledge of many things may be derived ? " 

" The Master replied : ' A comprehensive knowledge 
of nature is not so easily acquired. You must examine 
one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and when 
you have accumulated a store of facts, your knowledge 
will burst its shell and come forth into fuller light, con- 
necting all the particulars by general laws.' " 

In view of this lucid response of one of their great 
oracles, who can deny that the Chinese had a clear con- 
ception of the inductive method five hundred years before 
Bacon ? But, as Channing says, " Great men are not so 
much distinguished by difference of ideas, as by different 



CHINESE SPECULATION 37 

degrees in the impression made by the same idea." Con- 
trast with this a dictum of Chang, the second of the five : 
" To know nature, you must first know Heaven. If 
you have pushed your science so far as to know Heaven, 
then you are at the source of all things. Knowing their 
evolution you can tell what ought to be, and what ought 
not to be, without waiting for anyone to inform you." 
The former statement made no impression on the Chinese 
mind, while the latter is universally regarded as its guid- 
ing star. How different must have been the history of the 
world had Chinese thinkers, instead of seeking for a short 
cut to universal knowledge, been content to study one 
thing at a time, with a view to *' connecting all the 
particulars by general laws." 

In accordance with the principle so confidently enunci- 
ated, Chang and his followers (and his predecessors as 
well) have directed their main attack to the problems of 
cosmogony, believing that they might thereby arrive at 
the " source of all things." Tomes are filled with conjec- 
tures and reasonings which it would be unprofitable to 
follow out in detail. The results, however, if I may so 
call them, which they reached by a sort of happy guess 
work, are not unworthy of notice, forming as they do the 
philosophical creed of educated China. 

Stimulated, as I have said, by the speculations of Bud- 
dhist and Taoist schools, they took care to follow neither ; 
and betray the influence of these sectaries chiefly by the 
pains they are at to steer a middle course between the two. 
To the one school, mind is the only entity, and matter a 
deceptive figment of the imagination ; to the other, matter 
is the sole essence, and mind one of its products. Each 
inculcated a species of monism. The thinkers of the 
Sung dynasty, combining these one-sided conceptions, 
boldly assert a dualism in nature, and fix on li and ch'i, 



38 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

force and matter, as the seminal principles of tHe 
universe.* 

Is it not a little startling to find them at that early date 
hitting on a generalization which to us appears among the 
late results of modern science? Yet we shall see as we 
advance that this is not the only instance in which their 
unscientific speculations have anticipated the teachings of 
modern science. 

Both terms in their dual formula require elucidation. 
Of the two principles, one is active, the other passive. I 
have rendered li by the word " force," as being active, but 
it is not mere force. The word signifies a principle of 
order, a law of nature. It is often synonymous with Tao, 
" reason," answering to the Greek logos. When Chu Hsi 
says that " heaven is li/' he evidently means that the 
prime force in the universe is reason, — exactly the position 
maintained by the Taoists, though they use Tao, and not 
lij to express the idea. With both, this reason, if we may 
so call it, is rather a property of mind than mind itself. 
Each denies its personality, not perceiving that a property 
implies a substance, and that in this case the substance 
must be mind. 

Ch'i, the second term of the formula, being passive, is 
matter. In popular use, however, it is limited to matter in 
a gaseous form and in these philosophical speculations it 
means primordial matter. Hear what they say of it : 

In a treatise called Cheng Meng " Right Discipline for 
Youth," Chang, with a thoroughness characteristic of the 
Chinese, begins with the origin of the universe. ** The 
immensity of space, though called the great void," he says, 

* They profess to derive their doctrines from the / Ching, the 
Chinese Genesis— and so do the Taoists. It is surprising with 
what skill each school succeeds in reading its tenets into that 
ancient text, parts of which are referred to B. c. 2800! 



CHINESE SPECULATION 39 

" is not void. It is filled with a subtile substance. In 
fact, there is no such thing as a vacuum." Now what is 
this omnipresent '' subtile substance ? " If we compare the 
descriptions of it given by these writers, we cannot resist 
the conclusion that it is ether ; not the ether of the Greeks, 
the burning air, the empyrean, but the all-pervading ether 
of our modern science. It is the stuff out of which matter 
was produced. This is now a familiar idea, not of sci- 
ence, but of scientific speculation. It is set forth with 
special fullness in a work on the unseen universe, by those 
eminent professors, P. G. Tate and Balfour Stewart, 
along with the correlative doctrine of the reversion of 
matter to its primitive state. 

Our Chinese philosophers taught the same thing cen- 
turies ago. What says the author of Right Discipline? 
His words are : " Within the immensity of space matter 
is alternately concentrated and dissipated, much as ice is 
congealed or dissolved in water." Not merely do they 
antedate these English writers in making it the source 
of matter, they seem to have hit on the dynamical theory 
of the molecule, and particularly on vortex motion, as the 
process of transformation. Chou, a contemporary of 
Chang, is known as the author of a diagram of cos- 
mogony. He begins with a ring or circle of uniform 
whiteness, representing the primitive uniform ether. 
Then follows a circle partly dark, which shows the origi- 
nal substance differentiated into two forms, or rather 
forces, called Yin and Yang. Speaking of this diagram, 
** It shows," says Chu, the great expositor of the Chinese 
canonical books, " how the primitive void is transformed 
into matter." The two forces, mo lai mo ch'il, grind back 
and forth, like millstones, in opposite directions, and the 
detritus resulting from their friction is what we call 
matter." 



40 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Perhaps the most striking point in this Chinese cos- 
mogony is the account it gives of the creation of Hght. 
T'ai cKi tung erh sheng yang. " The primal essence 
moved, and Hght was born." That the mode of motion 
was vibratory they also conjectured, but I do not assert 
that they ever carried their researches so far as to measure 
the length of a luminiferous wave, a performance which 
may now be witnessed any day in our physical laboratories. 
The Occidental theory of the ether and its functions is 
confirmed by a magnificent array of scientific facts; the 
Oriental theory, standing apart from experimental sci- 
ence, never emerged from the state of speculation; a 
speculation wonderfully acute and sublime, in which the 
scientific imagination shows itself to the best advantage, 
divining as if by instinct great truths which require 
for their confinnation the slower process of patient 
investigation. Nor must we forget that in the West 
this theory existed in the state of a discarded specula- 
tion for at least two centuries before it received the seal 
of science. 

The first European to get a glimpse of the circumam- 
bient ocean was Rene Descartes. His mistake in referring 
the motions of the planets to whirlpools of ether brought 
discredit on his whole system, notwithstanding the fact 
that he also held that minute vortices were necessary to 
explain the constitution of matter. But what a glorious 
resurrection awaited it ! In the last year of the eigh- 
teenth century, touched literally by a sunbeam, it woke 
from its long slumber. Young found it necessary to the 
hypothesis of undulations, to which he was led by the 
interference of rays, and Fresnel resorted to it to explain 
the phenomena of polarization. If this revival enhances 
the respect with which we regard the " father of modern 
philosophy," should it not also reflect a little luster on 



CHINESE SPECULATION 41 

those early thinkers of the far East who made the 
Cartesian ether the basis of their cosmogony? 

Two or three doctrines that have played a great part in 
the intellectual movements of our age remain to be 
noticed as having been long ago propounded by the specu- 
lative philosophers of China. That they should have 
some conception of an evolutionary process in nature is 
not to be wondered at. What but a most thoroughgoing 
doctrine of evolution is to be expected from men who 
begin with the evolution of matter? The original unity 
of matter, suggested by modern researches in molecular 
physics, we may remark, was assumed in all of their cos- 
mological speculations. What the eminent physicist, J. 
W. Draper, says of the alchemists of Europe is true in a 
still higher degree of those of China, who led the way, 
both in speculation and investigation. " They were the 
first to seize the grand idea of evolution in its widest 
extent as a progress from the imperfect to the more per- 
fect in lifeless as well as living nature, in an increasing 
progression in which all things take part toward a higher 
and nobler state." This view is prominent in the writings 
of many of the philosophers of ancient China. 

Here is a statement from the works of one of the Cheng 
brothers, which shows that they came very near to the 
doctrine of the conservation of energy. He says : " Body 
in motion is force. Its contact with another is followed 
by a reaction or effect. This effect in turn acts as a force 
producing another effect, and so on without end." 
" Here," he adds, " is a vast subject for the student of 
philosophy." The Chinese *' students of philosophy " have 
not troubled themselves to verify this, any more than 
other shrewd guesses of their predecessors. The remark, 
however, which Chu makes on this passage shows a com- 
prehensive grasp of the idea. " Heaven and earth," he 



42 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

says, " witli all they contain, are nothing but transforma^ 
tions of one primitive force." 

In conclusion, the cosmogony of our Chinese philoso- 
phers is by no means so atheistic as it might appear. 
True, Chu Hsi, the authorized expounder of their system, 
says : " We must beware of thinking that there is a man 
up in the sky, who controls the motion of the universe." 
But he does not deny that there is a power at work whose 
nature is inscrutable. Says Chang, the most daring of the 
five : " The great void is filled with a pure or perfect fluid. 
Since it is perfectly fluid, it offers no obstruction to move- 
ment " (j. e., it neither impedes motion nor is its proper 
motion impeded). "There being no obstruction [i e., 
nothing to bring about a change of state], a divine force 
converts the pure into the gross." To explain the cre- 
ation of matter, he invokes, though reluctantly, the inter- 
vention of a divine power. Is it not what Horace calls 
Nodus tali vindice digniis? 

That our Chinese thinkers meant God in a proper 
sense, I will not affirm, but they considerately leave room 
for him. Have we not seen that one of the dual principles 
postulated by them is invested with some of the " at- 
tributes of mind ? " They dogmatize about self-acting 
laws, but there is reason to expect that another genera- 
tion will come to understand that law implies mind, and 
will proclaim with Emerson that 

" Conscious law is King of kings." 

To them our Western school of agnosticism is, as yet 
unknown. In that line, too, they are in advance of us 
by several centuries. But their agnosticism is of a milder 
type than ours. It is not aggressive, neither is it so 
bigoted as not to be open to conviction. It is, moreover, 
as the Occidental is not, profoundly reverential. For this 



CHINESE SPECULATION 43 

habit of mind it is indebted to Confucius, who, to wean 
his people from debasing forms of idolatry, employed for 
the Supreme Being the vague term Heaven, and dis- 
couraged them from prying into those transcendental 
mysteries hidden by the veil of blue. He believed, how- 
ever, in a moral government, and so do all his followers 
to this day. He ascribed to the object of his reverence 
more of personality than they are willing to admit. " The 
superior man," he said, ** fears three things, and the first 
is Heaven." '* With what words does Heaven speak to 
us ? " he asks again. '* The seasons run their rounds, and 
animal and vegetable life displays itself in a hundred 
forms. These are the language of Heaven." He ap- 
proaches far nearer to the Christian idea of God than the 
negations of Buddha, or the metamorphoses of Taoism; 
and there is reason to hope that his disciples will come 
back to the mental attitude of their great master, which 
has been somewhat obscured by later speculations. To 
bring them back, and to carry them beyond it, they 
require, above all things, a truer logic and a juster psy- 
chology than they have ever possessed.* 

Happy will it be for China when those who control the 
opinions of the people learn, in that vague Power of 
•which they stand in awe, to recognize the Pater MundL 

* With a view to meeting this demand, I prepared three years 
ago, in Chinese, a volume on Christian Psychology, which was in- 
troduced to the Chinese world by a preface from the pen of 
Li Hung Chang, and published by the Society for the Diffusion 
of Useful Knowledge. 



Ill 

ALCHEMY IN CHINA^ THE SOURCE OF CHEMISTRY 

" The search itself rewards the pains ; 

So though the chymist his great secret miss. 
For neither it in art nor nature is, 
Yet things well worth his toil he gains, 
And does his charge and labor pay, 
With good unsought experiments by the way." 

— Cowley. 

ONE in their etymological origin, the words Al- 
chemy and Chemistry describe different stages 
in the progress of the same science. The 
former represents it in its infancy, nursed on the bosom of 
superstition; its field of vision limited to special objects, 
and vainly striving to accomplish the impossible. The 
latter presents it in its maturity, when, emancipated from 
puerile fancies, it claims the realm of nature for its 
domain, and the laws of matter as its proper study. 

A glance at alchemy as practiced in the West will be 
necessary to prepare us for understanding the role it has 
played in the distant Orient. 

In its earlier stage it acknowledged no other aim than 
the pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of 
life. In its more advanced state it renounces them both, 
yet it secures substantial advantages of scarcely inferior 
magnitude, alleviating disease and prolonging life by the 
improvements it has introduced into the practice of medi- 
cine; while by the mastery it gives us over the elements 

44 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 45 

of nature it surpasses the most sanguine expectations of 
its early votaries. 

Those early votaries, whether they lived and labored in 
the West or East, should not be forgotten. They were 
the intrepid divers who explored the bottom of the stream, 
and laid the foundation for those magnificent arches on 
v/hich modern science has erected her easy thoroughfare. 
Like coral insects, *' building better than they knew," they 
toiled upward in the midst of darkness, guided only by a 
faint glimmer of the light, but without any conception of 
the extent and richness of the new world of knowledge 
that was destined to spring from their ill-directed labors. 
Heirs of the world's experience, and themselves daring 
experimenters, we need not be surprised to find them in 
possession of a large mass of empirical information.* 

The old Arabian Geber,t as early as the eighth century, 
was acquainted with the preparation of sulphuric acid 
and aqua regia, and gave an elaborate description of the 
more useful metals. He was a chemist ; if A. Von Hum- 
boldt is right in saying that '* Chemistry begins when 
men have learned to employ mineral acids and powerful 
solvents." 

In the twelfth century, Albertus Magnus | understood 

* Cowley expresses this idea in the verses prefixed to this 
essay, which, it must be confessed, contain more truth than 
poetry. 

tFrom his name comes gibberish much as dunce comes from 
Duns Scotus. 

X Humboldt speaks of Albertus Magnus as " an independent 
observer in the domain of analytical chemistry ; " and adds, 
" It is true that his hopes were directed to the transmutation of 
metals, but in his attempts to fulfil this object he not only 
improved the practical manipulation of ores, but also enlarged 
the insight of men into the general mode of action of the 
chemical forces of nature." 



46 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the cupellation of gold and silver, and their purification by 
means of lead, as also the preparation of caustic potassa, 
ceruse, and minium. 

In the thirteenth, Roger Bacon described with accuracy 
the properties of saltpetre, giving the recipe for gun-^ 
powder, and approaching very nearly to the explanation 
of the functions of air in combustion. 

In the same century, Raymond Lully described the 
process of obtaining the essential oils ; and, a little later, 
Basil Valentine obtained copper from blue vitriol by the 
use of iron; and discovered antimony, sulphuric ether, 
and fulminating gold. Isaac de Hollandais fabricated 
gems and described the process. Brandt, while analyzing 
a human body in quest of the philosopher's stone, 
stumbled on the discovery of phosphorus. 

In the early part of the sixteenth century, Paracelsus 
did much to overthrow the inert methods of the Galenists, 
and gained a great and well-deserved reputation by intro- 
ducing the use of m.ineral medicines, i. e. of chemical 
compounds.* This last-named individual, though among 
its more modern professors, may be taken as the very best 
type of the so-called science of alchemy, whether in its 
wisdom or its folly, in the absurdity of its pretensions or 
in the solid value of its actual achievements. His name, 
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes Paracelsus 
von Hohenheim, is synonymous with charlatan; and his 
fate sadly illustrates the history of his profession, which 
one of his fellow-laborers describes as " beginning in 
deceit, progressing with toil, and ending in beggary." 

* " With the rise of the Spagyrists and Paracelsus, who taught 
that the true use of chemistry is not to make gold, but medicines, 
we seem to perceive the first attempt at a rational pursuit of the 
study " (review of article *' Chemistry " in the EncyclopcBdia 
Britannica; Nature, January, 1877.) 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 47 

His life was terminated, like those of so many professed 
adepts, by imbibing a draught of his own elixir.* Nor 
was Paracelsus the last victim of this bewitching delusion. 
In 1784, Dr. Price, an English physician, after having 
made gold in the presence of several persons, and pre- 
sented some of the precious product to George III., on 
being examined by a scientific commission, committed 
suicide to escape the shame of exposure. 

Alchemy is not exclusively an old-world delusion. It 
crossed the ocean in the Mayflower along with witch- 
craft. 

'* One of the most curious things revealed to us in these 
volumes (of voyages)" says Mr. Lowell, ** is the fact 
that John Winthrop Jr., was seeking the philosopher's 
stone." 

In Jonathan Brewster, we have a specimen (of a dif- 
ferent kind). Is it not curious that there should have 
been a balneum mariae at New London, two hundred 
years ago? that la recherche de labsolu should have 
been going on there in a log hut under constant fear that 
the Indians would put out, not merely the flower of one 
little life, but rob the world of this divine secret.f 

Dr. Barnard, " the diamond-maker of Sacramento," 
with his feet on the auriferous dust of California, sacri- 
ficed his life a few years ago in the vain attempt to manu- 
facture something more precious than gold. Charging 

* Of martyrs of science of this description, no country can 
show a longer catalogue than China. It may be found in extenso 
in native polemics against the Taoist religion, or scattered 
through the pages of the national histories. It will be sufficient 
here to refer to the Emperors Mu Tsung (a. d. 825), and Wu 
Tsung (a. d, 847), of the T'ang dynasty, both of whom are said 
to have shortened their lives by drinking a pretended elixir of 
immortality. 

f Among My Books, pp. 253, 256. 



48 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

a hollow sphere with the costly ingredients, which, on the 
application of fire, were to crystallize into diamonds, he 
was blown into the air by a premature explosion, and 
died without revealing the secret of which he believed 
himself to be the sole depositary.* 

In Germany a Societas Hermetica existed as late as 
the year 1819; and this suggests a suspicion that the race 
of alchemists may not yet be altogether extinct, even 
among us. In fact the papers tell us of a man, who, in 
Canada, in 1877, committed suicide for the avowed pur- 
pose of testing the virtues of a restorative elixir which 
he professed to have invented. By the side of his lifeless 
corpse a letter was found directing that " a few particles 
of my ' creative all-changeful essence ' be scattered over 
my remains, when the elements will resolve themselves 
into a new combination, and I will reappear a living evi- 
dence of the truth of this new discovery." If these are 
the words of a madman, they are those of one whose 
brain was turned by the study of alchemy. A large bottle 
containing the elixir was found standing by the letter. If 
this poor fellow was the last to offer himself as a sacri- 
fice to the Moloch of alchemy, the last alchemist who 
succeeded in victimizing the public was Count Cagliostro, 
who, after vending his ** ehxir of immortal youth " in 
most of the courts of Europe, closed his career in a papal 
prison in 1795.! 

* His melancholy history was given at length under the title 
of " The Diamond-maker of Sacramento," some years ago, in the 
Overland Monthly, a spirited magazine of San Francisco, suc- 
cessfully edited by the poet Bret Harte, and the Hon. B. P. 
Avery, late U. S. Minister at Peking. Against the possibility of 
making large transparent crystals of pure carbon, modern chem- 
istry has never undertaken to pronounce; the ancient and unsuc- 
cessful diamond makers, however, were not chemists but alche- 
mists. 

f Scientific American, March 31, 1877. _ _: 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 49 

In China, the hermetic art still flourishes in full vigor. 
The Abbe Hue, in his History of Christianity in China, 
relates an amusing incident illustrating the ardor with 
which these persevering Orientals still continue to pursue 
the golden phantom. When the missionaries established 
themselves in Chao Ch'ing, in Canton province, a com- 
pany of educated natives possessed of considerable means 
were busily engaged in seeking to solve the problem of 
ages. A servant of the missionaries hinted to them that 
those learned Europeans were already in possession of it. 
Believing his assertion, they began to load him with 
favors to induce him to obtain the secret, for their ad- 
vantage. They gave him fine clothes, and furnished him 
with money to hire handsome apartments and purchase a 
beautiful wife; while he, on his part, was in no haste to 
fulfil his engagement. He was only waiting for the 
Western sphinxes to open their lips. But the patience of 
his generous victims finally gave out ; or, what is more 
probable, they learned from the missionaries that they 
had no such secret to communicate. To escape their 
vengeance, the crafty rogue was compelled to fly to a 
neighboring city, where he ended his days in a prison. 

If the Chinese are the last to surrender this pleasing 
delusion^ there is good reason to believe that they deserve 
the more honorable distinction of being the first to 
originate the idea. 

The origin of an idea so fruitful in results is a question 
of great interest ; and many writers have expended on it 
the resources of their learning. Some find it in the my- 
thology of the Greeks, maintaining (an interpretation 
older than the Christian era) that the golden fleece sought 
for by the Argonauts was merely a sheepskin on which 
was inscribed the secret of making gold ;* and this fancy 

* This construction of the legend comes from Dionysius of 
Mitylene, who lived circa B. c. 50. 



50 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

derives, it must be confessed, a little support from the cir- 
cumstance that Medea is represented as possessed of the 
corresponding secret of perpetuating or restoring youth, 
having cut to pieces and reconstructed her aged father- 
in-law. 

Some, again, discover the origin of the idea in Egypt, 
the land of Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), and allege, in 
corroboration of their view, that the ancient Egyptians 
possessed considerable skill in practical chemistry. But 
the advocates of its Egyptian origin are not able to trace 
it back further than the time of the Ptolemies, and stu^ 
dents of Hindu literature maintain that the Indians 
possessed a knowledge of it long before that date, though 
it must not be forgotten that there is nothing more uncer- 
tain than the chronology of ancient India.* 

Others adduce conclusive proof to show that modern 
Europe received it from the Arabs. They have not, how- 
ever, shown that the Arabs were its authors; and seem 
scarcely to have entertained a suspicion that those wan- 
dering sons of the desert, like birds and bees, were noth- 
ing more than agents through whom a prolific germ was 
conveyed from some portion of the remoter East. What 
that portion is, the name of Avicenna, one of the most 
eminent of the Arabian scholars, might have served to 
suggest, if they had followed the leading of words as 
carefully as a certain erudite Orientalist f who not only 
finds in India the origin of the doctrines of Pythagoras, 
but recognizes his name under the disguise of Budd- 
* Some instructive disclosures on this subject may be found in 
a lecture of the late Cardinal Wiseman entitled " Early History." 
It has been asserted by those who claim to be well versed in the 
history of India that in that country the earliest date that can 
be considered historical is April, b. c. 327, the date of its inva- 
sion by Alexander the Great. 
fPococke, Greece in India, 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 51 

haguru! For what is Avicenna but Ebn-Cinna? And 
what is Ebn-Cinna or Ibn Sina, as it is sometimes written, 
but a "Son of China?" — a designation assumed by the 
learned physician probably because he was born at 
Bokhara, on the confines of the Chinese Empire ! 

If we were as ready to rest in etymologies as the above- 
cited Orientalist, who triumphantly concludes a chapter 
with that curious derivation of the name of Pythagoras, 
we might consider our point as carried. Our etymology 
is, to say the least, as good as his; but we let it go for 
what it is worth, and rest our argument on better 
evidence.* 

* Nothing is more fallacious than the attempt to identify words 
in different languages by means of a mere superficial resemblance. 
Some years ago, in reading the Amour Medecin of Moliere, I 
fancied I had detected a translation in a combined form of the 
most familiar names for tan the Chinese elixir of life. The 
word orvietan, which is made so conspicuous in one of the scenes, 
describes a mysterious panacea, whose virtues the vender vaunts 
in strains as pompous as those of the Chinese alchemist. It 
struck me at once that, setting aside the accent, which goes for 
nothing in etymology, it might be taken as expressing golden 
elixir, and elixir of long life. Littre and the Dictionnaire de 
VAcademie decided against me, referring the word to the old city 
of Orvieto {urhs vetus). But, whatever the source of the name, 
so exactly to the thing itself answers Chinese tan, or elixir, that 
I cannot forbear quoting a few lines descriptive of its qualities. 

" Sganarelle. Monsieur, je vous prie de me donner une boite de 
votre orvietan, que je m'en vais vous payer. 
" L'Operateur (chantant) . 
L'or de tous les climats qu'entoure I'Ocean, 
Peut-il jamais payer ce secret d'importance? 
Mon remede guerit, par sa rare excellence, 
Plus de maux qu'on n'en peut nombrer dans tout un an : 
La gale, La rogne, La teigne, La fievre, La peste, La goutte, 

Verole, Descente, Rougeole. 
O grande puissance 
De rorvietan ! " 



52 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

It is not improbable, as we shall attempt to show, that 
the true cradle of alchemy was China — a country in which 
one of the oldest branches of the human family began 
their career of experience ; a country in which we discover 
so many of the seeds of our modern art; germs which, 
dwarfed and stunted in their native climate, have only 
been made to flourish by a change of soil. To establish 
this would be an interesting contribution to the history 
of science; and it might perhaps lead us to take an opti- 
mistic view even of the sins and follies of mankind, to 
discover that our modern chemistry, which is now 
dropping its mature fruits into the hands of Western en- 
terprise, had its root in the religion of Tao the most 
extravagant of the superstitions of the East. 

We shall briefly sketch the rise and development of 
ailchemy in China, and then conclude by comparinig 
it with the leading phases of the same pursuit as exhibited 
in Western countries. 

Originating at the least six hundred years before the 
Christian era,* the religion of Tao still exerts a powerful 
influence over the mind of the Chinese. This is not the 
place to discuss either its sober tenets or its wild fan- 
tasies, but there is one of its doctrines that connects it 

The reader may compare this with passages quoted in the 
sequel from Taoist books. 

N. B. — Or, in the first line of the description, is an evident allu- 
sion to the first syllable of the name, which the vendor takes to 
mean "golden." 

* It is indigenous to China ; and though we are unable to trace 
it to an earlier date, there is good reason to believe that it is as 
old as the Chinese race. The connection of alchemy with Tao- 
ism did not escape the notice of the earlier Jesuit missionaries; 
but the Rev. Dr. Edkins, in a paper on Taoism published about 
forty years ago, was the first, I believe, to suggest a Chinese 
origin for the alchemy of Europe. 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 53 

closely with our present subject. It looks on the soul as 
only a more refined form of matter ; regards the soul and 
body as identical in substance, and maintains the possi- 
bility of preventing their dissolution by a course of phy- 
sical discipline. This is the seed-thought of Chinese al- 
chemy ; for this materialistic notion it was that first led the 
disciples of Laotze to investigate the properties of 
matter. 

Its development is easy to trace. Man's first desire is 
long life — his second is to be rich. The Taoist com- 
menced with the former, but was not long in finding his 
way to the latter. As it was possible by physical disci- 
pline to lengthen the period of life, he conceived that 
the process might be carried far enough to result in cor- 
poreal immortality, accompanied by a mastery of matter 
and all its potencies. The success of the process, though, 
like the quest of the Holy Grail, involving moral qualifi- 
cations, depended mainly on diet and medicine; and in 
quest of these he ransacked the forest, penetrated the 
earth, and explored distant seas. The natural longing 
for immortality was thus made, under the guidance of 
Taoism, to impart a powerful impulse to the progress of 
discovery in three departments of science — botany, min- 
eralogy, and geography. Nor did the other great object 
of pursuit remain far in the rear. A few simple experi- 
ments, such as the precipitation of copper from the oil of 
vitriol by the application of iron, and the blanching of 
metals by the fumes of mercury, suggested the possibility 
of transforming the baser metals into gold.* This 

* Science is not opposed to the abstract theory of transmuta- 
tion. Indeed, the modern chemist has been led by the phe- 
nomena of allotropy and isomerism, not to speak of other con- 
siderations, almost to accept as a principle what he lately de- 
nounced as a groundless assumption of his ancient forerunner — 



54 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

brought on the stage another, and, if possible, a more 
energetic, motive for investigation. The bare idea of 
acquiring untold riches by such easy means inspired with 
a kind of frenzy minds that were hardly capable of the 
loftier conception of immortality. It had, moreover, the 
effect of directing attention particularly to the study of 
minerals, the most prolific field for chemical discovery. 

Whether in the vegetable or the mineral kingdom, the 
researches of the Chinese alchemists were guided by one 
simple principle — the analogy of man to material nature. 
As in their view the soul was only a more refined species 
of matter, and was endowed with such wondrous powers, 
so every object in nature, they argued, must be possessed 
of a soul, an essence or spirit, which controls its growth 
and development — a something not unlike the essentia 
quinta of Western alchemy. This they believed to be the 
case, not only with animals, which display some of the 

viz., that a fundamental unity underlies many, if not all of, the 
forms of matter. On this subject see two interesting papers in 
the volume of Nature for 1879 (pp. 593, 625) on the question 
"Are the Elements Elementary?" The writer speaks approv- 
ingly of the hypothesis of original matter having a molecular or 
atomic structure; all the molecules being uniform in size and in 
shape, but not all possessed of the same amount of motion — the 
difference of their motions giving rise to all the properties of the 
various elements. The speculation which resolves matter into 
force tends in the same direction. " I must confess," says Pro- 
fessor Cook, " that I am rather drawn to that view of nature 
which has favor with many of the most eminent physicists of the 
present time, and which sees in the Cosmos, besides mind, only 
two essentially distinct beings — namely, matter and energy; 
which regards all matter as one, and all energy as one; and 
which refers the qualities of substances to the affections of the 
one substratum modified by the varying play of forces" (Lec- 
tures on the New Chemistry, lecture iv., International Series). 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 55 

attributes of mind, but with plants, which extract their 
appropriate nourishment from the earth, and transform it 
into fruits; and the same with minerals, which they re- 
garded as generated in the womb of the earth. It was to 
this half-spiritual, half-material theory that they had re- 
course to account for the transformations that are per- 
petually going on in every department of nature. As the 
active principle in each object was so potent in effecting 
the changes which we constantly observe, they imagined 
that it might attain to a condition of higher development 
and greater efficiency. Such an upward tendency was, 
in fact, perpetually at work; and all things were striving 
to " purge off their baser fires " and enter on a higher 
and purer state. Nor were they merely striving to clothe 
themselves with material forms of a higher order. Matter 
itself was constantly passing the limits of sense and 
putting on the character of conscious spirit. This idea 
threw over the face of nature a glow of poetry. It 
awakened the torpid imagination and created an epoch 
in literature. It kindled the fancy of Chuangtze, in- 
spired the eloquence of Lii-tsu, and it figures in a thou- 
sand shapes among the graceful tales of the Liao-chai. 
It filled the earth with fairies and genii. An easy step 
connected them with those mysterious points of light 
which in all ages have excited so powerfully the hopes 
and fears of the human race. Astrology became wedded 
to alchemy, and the five principal planets bear in the 
current language of the present day the names of the 
elements over which they are regarded as presiding. 

In China, as elsewhere, alchemy has always been an 
occult science. Its students have been pledged to secrecy, 
and their knowledge transmitted mainly by means of oral 
tradition, each adept tracing his lineage back to Huang 



56 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Ti (b. c. 2700) or Kuang Ch'engtze, as the Freemason 
deduces his pedigree from Solomon or Hiram of Tyre.* 

Their doctrines, Hke the deHcate beauties of some 
Eastern climes, were never allowed to go abroad without 
being covered with a veil. They were wrapped in folds 
of impenetrable mystery, and expressed, for the most 
part, in the measured lines and metaphorical language of 
poetry. Still, in spite of every precaution that pride or 
jealousy was able to suggest, some of their secrets would 
gradually ooze out, and many of the rules for working 
metals now in common use bear in their very terms the 
stamp of an alchemic parentage. 

After this cursory survey, it may not be amiss to intro- 
duce a few extracts from native authors, professors of 
the mysterious lore, in order to ascertain how far they 
corroborate the foregoing views, but especially to aid us 
in deciding whether any real connection is to be traced 
between the Chinese and European schools of alchemy. 

I. FROM KAO SHANGTZE. 

The Secret of Immortality'.] 

" The body is the dwelling-place of life ; the spirits are 
the essence of life; and the soul is the master of life. 

* Huang Ti is at least semi-mythical. The earliest historical 
sovereign who became a votary of alchemy was Ch'in Shih 
Huang, the builder of the Great Wall, B. C. 220. 

t These extracts are not arranged in the order of time. The 
antiquity o£ the system will be considered in another place ; and 
I begin with two from writers whose age I am not able to fix 
with precision. For the citations from both I am indebted to a 
compilation, in twelve volumes, entitled The Elixir or Quintes- 
sence of the Philosophers. Among the philosophers cited, those 
who favored alchemy are in a very small minority. 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 57 

When the spirits are exhausted, the body becomes sick; 
when the soul is in repose, the spirits keep their place; 
and when the spirits are concentrated, the soul becomes 
indestructible. Those who seek the elixir must imitate 
the Yin and Yang [the active and passive principles in 
nature] and learn the harmony of numbers. They must 
govern the soul and unite their spirit. If the soul is a 
chariot, the spirits are its horses. When the soul and 
spirits are properly yoked together, you are immortal." 

II. FROM TANTZE. 

The Power of Miracles, 

" The clouds are a dragon, the wind a tiger. Mind is 
the mother, and matter the child. When the mother 
summons the child, will it dare to disobey? Those who 
would expel the spirits of evil must (by the force of their 
mind) summon the spirits of the five elements. Those 
who would conquer serpents must obtain the influences 
of the five planets. By this means the Yin and Yang, 
the dual forces of nature, may be controlled; winds and 
clouds collected ; mountains and hills torn up by the roots ; 
and rivers and seas made to spring out of the ground. 
Still the external manifestation of this power is not so 
good as the consciousness of its possession within." 

III. FROM THE SAME. 

The 'Adept Superior to Hunger, Cold, and Sickness. 

" He inhales the fine essence of matter, how can he be 
hungry? He is warmed by the fire of his own soul, 
how can he be cold? His five vitals are fed on the 
essence of the five elements, how can he be sick ? " 



58 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

IV. FROM LU TSU^ OF THE t'aNG DYNASTY.* 

Patience Essential to Success. 

** Would you seek the golden tan [the elixir] , it is 
not easy to obtain. The three powers [sun, moon, and 
stars] must seven times repeat their footsteps ; and the 
four seasons nine times complete their circuit. 

" You must wash it white and burn it red ; when one 
draught will give you ten thousand ages, and you will 
be wafted beyond the sphere of sublunary things." 

V. FROM THE SAME. 

The Necessity of a Living Teacher. 

" Every one seeks long life, but the secret is not easy 
to find. If you covet the precious things of heaven, you 
must reject the treasures of earth. You must kindle the 
fire that springs from water, f and evolve the Yin con- 

* Lii-Tsu (or Lii-Yen) flourished in the latter half of the eighth 
century. In early life respected as a scholar and a magistrate, 
and in later years famed for the eloquence of his style and the 
elevation of his character, he did much to revive the decaying 
credit of the " school of the genii." His works are voluminous 
and well known, but, like most of those ascribed to the great 
masters of Taoism, probably comprehend much that is not genu- 
ine. 

fThis phrase reminds us of a quaint piece of doggerel from 
the pen of George Ripley, a noted alchemist of England, who 
died in 1490, notwithstanding the medicines recommended in his 
two books on Alchymie and Aurum Potabile. The following 
are a few of his incomprehensible verses : 

" The well must brenne in water clear, 
Take good heed, for this they fere, 
The fire with water brent shall be. 
The earth on fire shall be set 
And water with fire shall be knit. 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 59 

tained within the Yang. One word from a sapient master, 
and you possess a draught of the golden water." 

VI. FROM THE SAME. 

The Chief Elements in Alchemy. 

"All things originate from earth. If you can get at 
the radical principle, the spirit of the green dragon is 
mercury, and the water of the white ti,ger * is lead. The 
knowing ones will bring mother and child together, when 
earth will become heaven, and you will be extricated from 
the power of matter." 

VII. FROM THE SAME. 

Description of the Philosopher's Stone: Self -culture Nec- 
essary to Obtain it. 

" I must diligently plant my own field. There is 
within it a spiritual germ that may live a thousand years. 
Its flower is like yellow gold. Its bud is not large, but 
the seeds are round [globules of mercury?] and like to a 
spotless gem. Its growth depends on the soil of the cen- 
tral palace [the heart], but its irrigation must proceed 

Of the white stone and the red 
Lo, here is the true deed ! " 

* Yin and Yang are the dual forces which control the elements 
of nature. Though generally referred to the sexual system, their 
chief symbols are the sun and moon, and the original signi- 
fication of the terms is light and darkness. The " tiger " and 
" dragon " are synonyms for the oft-repeated Yin and Yang. 
Their use in this sense is comparatively ancient, as we may gather 
from the title of a book still extant, by the historian Pan Ku, in 
the first century of our era. 



6o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

from a higher fountain [the reason]. After nine years of 
cultivation, root and branch may be transplanted to the 
heaven of the greater genii." 

VIII. FROM A BIOGRAPHER OF LU-TSU. 

Speaking of the labors of his great master, he says, 
*' Among the eight stones, he made most use of cinnabar, 
because from that he extracted mercury; and among the 
five metals, he made most use of lead, because from that 
he obtained silver. The fire of the heart [blood] is red 
as cinnabar; and the water of the kidneys [urine] is dark 
as lead. To these must be added sulphur, that the com- 
pound may be efficacious. Lead is the mother of silver, 
mercury, the child of cinnabar. Lead represents the in- 
fluence of the kidneys, mercury that of the heart." 

We must here introduce a few extracts from the Wu 
Chen Picn, a work which still holds the place of a text- 
book among the followers of Laotze. They will serve 
to indicate the spirit and aim of these operations, though 
the processes are still carefully concealed. In fact, all 
that is given to the public seems merely designed to in- 
flame the imagination, and to induce readers to place 
themselves under the instruction of a Taoist master. 

1. The Great Motive. — " However long this mortal life, 
its events are all uncertain. He who yesterday bestrode 
his horse so grandly at the head of the street, to-day is 
a corpse in the coffin. His wife and his wealth are his 
no longer. His sins must take their course, and self- 
deception will do no good. If you do not seek the great 
remedy, how will you find it? If you find out the method 
and do not prepare it, how unwise are you ! " 

2. A Vindication. — '' If the virtuous follow a false doc- 
trine, they reclaim it; but if the vicious profess a true 
doctrine, they pervert it. So it is with the golden elixir: 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 61 

a deviation of an inch leads to the error of a mile. If 
I succeed, then my fate is in my own hands, and my body 
may last as long as the heavens. But the vulgar pervert 
this doctrine to the gratification of low desires [such as 
those for wealth and pleasure]." 

3. Outline of Process. — " In the gold-furnace you must 
separate the mercury from the cinnabar, and in the gemmy 
bath you must precipitate the silver from the water. To 
wield the fires of this divine work is not the task of a 
day. But out of the midst of the pool suddenly the sun 
rises. * 

No one at all acquainted with the operations of chem- 
istry can fail to remark how much is implied in this 
reference to the precipitation of silver. Nor can any 
one familiar with the language of Western alchemists 
avoid being struck by the similarity of the terms here 
employed. As he reads of " separating mercury from 
cinnabar," '* precipitating silver," " wielding the fires of 
the divine work," the " gemmy bath," and the " sun rising 
out of the pool," does he not fancy himself perusing a 
fragment from LuUy or Albertus describing the balneum 
marioe and the production of gold? 

We add three more to our series of illustrative ex- 
tracts : 

I. The Reason for Obscure and Figurative Phrase- 
ology- — " The holy sage was afraid of betraying the 
secrets of heaven. He accordingly sets forth the true 
Yin and Yang under the images of the white tiger and 

* A few years ago I made the acquaintance of a Kiangsi man 
by the name of Hsiung, who had published a book of some literary 
merit, and was withal an ardent student of the occult science, A 
manuscript volume of his own compilation, which he permitted 
me to examine, contained, among other diagrams, one which rep- 
resented the sun rising out of a smoking furnace — showing that 
the hermetic symbol for gold is the same in China as in Europe. 



62 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the green dragon. And the harmony of the two chords 
he represents under the symbols of the true lead and the 
true mercury." * 

2. Nature of the Inward Harmony. — " The two things 
to be united are zvuh and wo, the me and the not me. 
When these combine, the passions are in harmony with 
nature, and the elements are complete." 

In other passages we have noticed the outcropping 
of a moral idea. In this we find a materialistic doctrine 
suddenly metamorphosed into the most subtle form of 
pantheistic idealism. 

3. Self-discipline the Best Elixir (from Tantze, not 
in Wu Chen Picn) — *' Among the arts of the alchemist is 
that of preparing an elixir which may be used as a sub- 
stitute for food. This is certainly true; yet the ability 
to enjoy abundance or endure hunger comes not from 
the elixir, but from the fixed purpose of him who uses 
it. When a man has arrived at such a stage of progress 
that to have and not to have are the same ; when life and 
death are one; when feeling is in harmony with nature, 
and the inner and the outer worlds united — then he can 
escape the thraldom of matter, and leave sun, moon, and 
stars behind his back. To him it will then be of no conse- 
quence whether he eat a hundred times in a day, or only 
once in a hundred days." We might fill volumes with 

* It is curious to see how Western alchemists exhibit the same 
phase of feeling. Howes, an old writer, quoted in Mr. Lowell's 
New England of Two Centuries Ago, expresses himself thus in 
a letter to Gov. Winthrop of Massachusetts : '' Dear friend, I 
desire with all my heart that I might write plainer to you ; but 
in discovering the mystery, I may diminish its majesty, and give 
occasion to the profane to abuse it, if it should fall into unworthy 
hands." The mystery was the unity of matter. He adds, " As 
there is all good to be found in unity, and all evil in duality and 
multiplicity, phoenix ilia admiranda sola semper existit." 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 63 

similar extracts without, we fear, adding much to the 
information of our readers. 

The composition of the eHxir was a secret which the 
alchemist did not care to divulge. If, therefore, we seek 
for precise directions for its preparation in the writings 
of a professed adept, we seek in vain. 

There is, indeed, one oft-repeated formula, which ap- 
pears to be absurdly simple. It is this : " Ph. 8 oz., Hg. y2 
lb.; mix thoroughly, and the combination will result in a 
mass of the golden elixir." But it ceases to be simple 
when we learn that both metals and proportions are to be 
taken in a mystical sense; that, in fact, instead of indi- 
cating the materials of the elixir, they only point to the 
precise moment when the final touch is to be given to a 
compHcated process — viz., one minute after the full of 
the moon. If this resolves itself into " moonshine,'* an- 
other, which has the air of being more in detail, is still 
less luminous. " Plant the Yang and grow the Yin; cul- 
tivate and cherish the precious seed. When it springs 
up, it shows a yellow bud; the bud produces mercury, 
and the mercury crystallizes into granules hke grains of 
golden millet. One grain is to be taken at a dose, and 
the doses repeated for a hundred days, when the body 
will be transformed and the bones converted into gold. 
Body and spirit will both be endowed with miraculous 
properties, and their duration will have no end." These 
recipes are both from standard text-books of the Taoist 
school. 

Ko Hung, of the fourth century, is one of the most 
voluminous writers on the subject. He gives nine varie- 
ties of the tan, but no clear account of the preparation of 
any of them. The following extract from his work may 
serve to show the kind of reasoning by which he and his 
fellows suffered themselves to be deluded: 



64 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

" I formerly thought the Taoist mystery was intended 
to delude simple folk, and that there was nothing in it 
but empty words ; but when I saw the Emperor Wu sub- 
ject Tso Tse and others to a fast of nearly a month — 
their complexion continuing fresh and their strength un- 
abated — I said there was no reason why they should not 
extend the fast to fifty years. 

*' Another Taoist, Kan Shih, placed a number of fish 
in boiling oil; some of them having first swallowed a 
few drops of an elixir, swam about as if they were in the 
water, the others were boiled so that they could be eaten. 

" Silk-worms taking the same medicine lived for ten 
months; chickens and young dogs taking it ceased to 
grow ; and a white dog on taking it turned black ; all of 
which shows that there are things in heaven and earth 
surpassing our comprehension. Would that I could 
break the fetters of sense and give my whole heart to the 
pursuit of the elixir of life ! " 

We find a more explicit account of the composition 
of the elixir in the Ko Chih Ching Yuan, or Mirror of 
Scientific Discovery; but here again we are not favored 
with anything beyond a barren inventory of ingredients, 
without any statement of proportion or manipulation. 

" The elixir of the eight precious things," says this 
author, " is so called because it contains cinnabar, orpi- 
ment, realgar, sulphur, saltpetre, ammonia, empty green 
[an ore of cobalt], and mother-of-clouds [a kind of 
mica]." 

This and the other passages above cited throw, we con- 
fess, very little light on any question of practical science ; 
but they are not unimportant in relation to the history of 
science, indicating as they do the spirit and aims of the 
Chinese alchemists — the most enthusiastic, and, as we 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 65 

think, the earliest, explorers in a region which has proved 
to be one of inexhaustible fertility. 

The results of tlieir labors in the way of chemical dis- 
covery it may not be easy to determine ; though it is safe 
to affirm that, for what they knew on that subject prior to 
their recent intercourse with the West, the Chinese are 
mainly indebted to those early devotees of the experi- 
mental philosophy who passed their lives among the fumes 
of the alembic. The skill which the Chinese exhibit in 
metallurgy, their brilliant dye-stuffs and numerous pig- 
ments; their early knowledge of gunpowder, alcohol, 
arsenic, Glauber's salt, calomel, and corrosive sublimate; 
their pyrotechny ; their asphyxiating and anaesthetic com- 
pounds — all give evidence of no contemptible proficiency 
in practical chemistry.* 

In their books of curious receipts, we find instructions 
for the manufacture of sympathetic inks, for removing 
stains, compounding and alloying metals, counterfeiting 
gold, whitening copper, overlaying the baser with the 
precious metals, etc. In some of these recipes a caution 
is added that neither " women, cats, nor chickens '' be 
allowed to approach during the process, obviously a 
relic of alchemistic superstition. 

The Hermes of China has no female disciples, though 
Europe can boast the names of not a few. The alchemist 
of China has generally been a celibate, and very fre- 
quently a religious ascetic, to whom the life-giving elixir, 

* See Davis's Chinese, ch. xviii,, for a very interesting account 
of the preparation of calomel (chloride of mercury) by a Chinese 
chemist, and by a truly Chinese process. In the same chapter 
the author sketches the fantastic physical theories of the Chinese, 
and adds, " All this looks very much as if the philosophy of our 
forefathers was derived intermediately from China." 



66 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

rather than the aurific stone, was the chief object of pur- 
suit. 

Lii-tsu, one of the most eminent, is said to have earned 
immortality by rejecting the art of making gold.* 

In the Chinese system there are two processes — the 
one inward and spiritual, the other outward and mate- 
rial. To obtain the greater elixir, involving the attain- 
ment of immortality, both must be combined; but the 
lesser elixir, which answers to the philosopher's stone, or 
a magical control over the powers of nature, might be 
procured with less pains. Both processes were pursued 
in seclusion, commonly in the recesses of the mountains, 
the term for adepts signifying " mountain men." 

In a discourse on metals in one of the works above 
cited, we are told that the seminal principle of gold first 
assumes the form of quicksilver. Exposed to the influ- 
ence of the moon, it is liquid; but when subjected to the 
action of the pure Yang, the sun or the male essence, it 
solidifies and becomes yellow gold. Those who desire 
to convert quicksilver into gold should carry on their 
operations among the mountains, that the effluences from 
the stones may assist the process. 

Nothing seems to be required in addition to the inci- 
dental proofs already adduced to establish the existence 

♦ As the legend goes, shortly after commencing the study of 
the art, he was met by one of the old genii, who offered to impart 
to him the great secret of transmutation. " But," asked the 
young man, " will not the artificial gold relapse to its original 
elements in the course of time?" "Yes," replied the genius, 
" but that need not concern you, as it will not happen until after 
ten thousand ages." " I decline it then," said Lii-tsu. " I would 
rather live in poverty than bring a loss on my fellow-men, though 
after ten thousand ages." The noble sense of right was more 
meritorious than any number of sham charities ; and the youth 
who had conscience enough to spurn the gilded bait was at once 
admitted to the heaven of the genii. 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 67 

of a connection between the alchemy of Europe and that 
of China; still, a few considerations in the way of com- 
parison may serve to make the nature and extent of that 
connection somewhat more apparent. 

1. The study of alchemy did not make its appearance 
in Europe until it had been in full vigor in China for at 
least six centuries. Nor did it appear there, according 
to the best authorities, until the fourth century, when 
intercourse with the Far East had become somewhat fre- 
quent. It entered Europe, moreover, by way of Byzan- 
tium and Alexandria, the places in which that Intercourse 
was chiefly centred. At a later day it was revived in the 
West by the irruption of the Saracens, who may be sup- 
posed to have had better opportunities for becoming ac- 
quainted with it in consequence of being nearer to its 
original source. One of the most renowned seats of al- 
chemic industry was Bagdad while it was the seat of the 
caliphate. An extensive commerce was at that period 
carried on between Arabia and China. In the eighth 
century embassies were interchanged between the caliphs 
and the emperors. Colonies of Arabs were established in 
the seaports of the Empire ; and the grave of a cousin of 
Mahomet remains at Canton as a monument of that early 
intercourse. 

2. The objects of pursuit were in both schools identi- 
cal, and in either case twofold — immortality and gold. 

In Europe the former was the less prominent because 
the people, being in possession of Christianity, had a suf- 
ficiently vivid faith in a future life to satisfy their in- 
stinctive longings without having recourse to question- 
able arts. 

3. In either school there were two ehxirs, the greater 
and the less, and the properties ascribed to them corre- 
sponded very closely. 



68 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

4. The principles underlying both systems are identical 
in the composite nature of the metals, and their vegetation 
from a seminal germ. Indeed, the characters tsing, for 
the germ, and tai, for the matrix, which constantly occur 
in the writings of Chinese alchemists, might be taken for 
the translation of terms in the vocabulary of the Western 
school, did not their higher antiquity forbid the hypo- 
thesis. 

5. The ends in view being the same, the means by 
which they were pursued were nearly identical ; mercury 
and lead (to which sulphur was tertiary) being as con- 
spicuous in the laboratories of the East as mercury and 
sulphur were in those of the West. It is of less signifi- 
cance to add that many other substances were common to 
both schools than it is to note the remarkable coincidence 
that in Chinese as in European alchemy the names of the 
principal reagents are employed in a mystical sense.* 

6. Both schools, or at least individuals in both, held 
the strange doctrine of a cycle of changes, in the course 
of which the precious metals revert to their original ele- 
ments. 

7. Both systems were closely interwoven with astrology. 

8. Both led to the practice of magical arts and un- 
bounded charlatanism. 

9. Both dealt in language of equal extravagance; and 
the style of European alchemists, so unlike the sobriety 
of thought characteristic of the Western mind, would, if 
considered alone, furnish ground for a probable conjec- 

* Robert Boyle (quoted in Nature, January, 1877) is unspar- 
ing in his denunciation of " those sooty empirics, who have their 
eyes darkened and their brains troubled with the smoke of their 
furnaces; and who are wont to evince their salt, sulphur, and 
mercury (to which they give the canting title of hypostatical 
principles) to be the true principle of things." 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 69 

ture that their science must have had its origin in the 
fervid fancy of an Oriental people.* 

In conclusion, granting that the leading objects of al- 
chemical pursuit are such as might have suggested them- 
selves to the human mind in any country, as it felt its 
way towards an acquaintance with the forces of nature, 
yet the similarity of the circumstances with which they 
are found associated in the West and the East forbids the 
supposition of an independent origin. Setting aside as 
untenable the claims of Europe and of Western Asia, we 
regard alchemy as unquestionably a product of the re- 
moter East. To the honor of being its birthplace, India 
and China are rival claimants. The pretensions of the 
former f we are not in a position to estimate by direct 
investigation ; but they appear to us to be excluded by 
the proposition, of which there is abundant proof, that 
the alchemy of China is not an exotic, but a genuine pro- 
duct of the soil of that country. 

As before remarked, it springs from Taoism, an inr 

* The whimsical idea of the homunculus, which was so promi- 
nent in the works of the later alchemists of the West, and which 
plays such a conspicuous role in the second part of Goethe's 
Faust, is one of which I can find no vestige in the records of 
Eastern alchemy. In the writings of the latter school, however, 
the power of synthetic creation is asserted boldly enough, and 
the idea of producing the homunculus, i. e. of creating a human 
being by an artificial process, is, in fact, only a particular appli- 
cation of the principle. 

t That much-lamented sinologue, the late Mr. Mayers, favors 
the claim of India, though, alas ! it is no longer possible to ques- 
tion him as to the grounds of his opinion. In his essay on the 
origin of gunpowder, he says, " It is at least allowable to sur- 
mise that those Brahmin chemists who, it is almost proved, in- 
augurated the search after the philosopher's stone and the elixir 
vitcB may have been the first to discover what secret forces are 
developed in the fiery union between sulphur and saltpetre." 



70 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

digenous religion ; and shows itself in clearly defined out- 
lines, if not in full maturity, at a time when there was 
little or no intercourse with India. Had it appeared some 
centuries later simultaneously with the introduction of 
Buddhism, there might have been more reason to look 
on it as a foreign importation. In polar antagonism with 
the idealistic philosophy of Buddha, its fundamental tenets 
are not only found in the ancient manual of Laotze,* 
they are distinctly traceable in the oldest of the Confucian 
classics. 

In the / Ching, the diagrams of which are referred to 
Fu Hsi, B. c. 2800, while the text dates from Wen Wang, 
B. c. 1 1 50, and the commentary from Confucius, b. c. 
500, we discover at length what appears to us the true 
source of those prolific ideas which prepared the way for 
our modern chemistry. Its name, The Book of Changes, 
is suggestive; and we find throughout its contents the 
vague idea of change replaced by the more definite one 
of " transformation," the key-word of alchemy. 

In the very first section. Wen Wang descants on the 
" changes and transmutations of the creative principle ; '* 
and Confucius, in several chapters of his commentary, 
grows eloquent over the same theme. " How great," he 
exclaims, *' is change ! How wonderful is change ! When 
heaven and earth were formed, change was throned in 
their midst ; and should change cease to take place, heaven 
and earth would soon cease to exist." " The diagrams," 
he says again, " comprehend the profoundest secrets of 

* The famous poet, Pailotien, in a well-known stanza, asserts 
that the extravagances of alchemy are not to be found there. 
Yet the thoughtful reader cannot fail to discover its latent princi- 
ples, especially the effect of discipline in securing an ascendency 
over matter, and the protean power of transmutation hidden in the 
forces of nature. The alchemists all claim Laotze as a lineal 
ancestor, though they derive their origin from a remoter source. 



ALCHEMY IN CHINA 71 

the universe; and the power of exciting the various mo- 
tions of the universe depends on their explanation : the 
power to effect transmutation depends on the understand- 
ing of the diagrams of changes." Here, in a word, is 
the leading idea of the / Ching; and, at the same time, 
the general object of Chinese students of alchemy. In- 
deed, so thoroughly are their works pervaded by the 
spirit of that venerable epitome of primitive science that 
it is impossible to mistake the source from which they 
derive their inspiration. The Taoists, without a dissent- 
ing voice, recognize it as the first book in the canon of 
their sect; and the Tyrant of Ch'in, a zealous votary of 
alchemy, spared the / Ching from the flames to which 
he consigned all the other writings of Confucius and his 
disciples. We have therefore no hesitation in affirming 
that alchemy is indigenous to china^ and coeval with 

THE DAWN OF LETTERS. 



BOOK II 

Chinese Literature 



IV 

POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 

THAT the Chinese are capable of poetry may to 
some be a revelation, so practical and prosaic are 
the specimens of the race with whom they have 
come in contact. Yet an educated Chinese is, of all men, 
the most devoted to the cultivation of poetry. If he makes 
a remarkable voyage, he is sure to give the world his 
impressions in verse. He inscribes fresh couplets on his 
door-posts every New Year's Day. Poetical scrolls, the 
gifts of friends, adorn the walls of his shop or study. He 
spends his leisure in tinkering sonnets ; and, when he 
escorts a guest as far as some pretty pavilion on a hill- 
side, he never fails to extract from his boot-top the ready 
pencil, and to indite in verse an adieu, which passes for 
impromptu — scrawling, at the same time, on wall or pillar 
a record of the occasion. 

All this is, no doubt, somewhat artificial, but it has its 
root in national sentiment. For of China it is true to-day, 
as of no other nation, that an apprenticeship in the art of 
poetry forms a leading feature in her educational system. 
Wales has her Eisteddfod, or annual assemblage of bards, 
and the great schools of England have their prize poems ; 
but in China no youth who aspires to civil office or literary 
honors is exempted from composing verse in his trial 
examination. To be a tax-collector, he is tested not in 
arithmetic but in prosody — a usage that has been in force 
for nearly a thousand years. Its origin, in fact, goes 
back much further. For did not Confucius make poetry 

75 



76 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the front foot of his educational tripos ? " Let poetry," 
he says, " be the beginning, manners the middle, and 
music the finish." 

The sage who prescribed this course of study was a 
musician ; but if he ever wrote verse, not a line of it has 
come down to our day. He was, however, far from 
prosaic. His sayings sparkle with gems of metaphor; 
and that he keenly enjoyed poetry and appreciated its 
refining influence is evident from the maxim just quoted. 

A stronger proof of his taste for poetry is the fact that, 
in one of the Five Classics, he took pains to collect and 
preserve the most noteworthy poems that had appeared 
prior to his day. In another, the Shu, or Book of History, 
edited by him, he has also preserved sundry fragments 
of primeval poetry. We have there the spectacle of 
princes and their ministers improvising responsive verse, 
a thousand years before the Trojan War. 

In China, as in Greece, the birth of poetry preceded 
that of philosophy. The Lyric Muse heralded the dawn 
of culture ; and, by the first light of history, her rosy 
fingers are discerned busily engaged in weaving a robe of 
many colors to cover the nakedness of new-bom hu- 
manity. 

Epic poetry, so conspicuous in India, is wholly want- 
ing in China, its place being supplied by historical ro- 
mance, which exhibits all the features of poetry with the 
exception of verse. 

Dramatic poetry is abundant; but the drama, though 
it emerged ten centuries ago, is, if compared with our 
modern stage, still in a very primitive condition. It has 
scarcely got beyond the age of Thespis. An actor changes 
his dress, as he changes his role, in the sight of the audi- 
ence, singing out as he dons the robes of majesty : '' Now 
I am your humble servant, the Emperor." 



POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 77 

Didactic poems, in which verse serves simply as an 
aid to the memory, are so common that official proclama- 
tions are frequently thrown into that form. When, in 
consequence of the triumph of British arms half a cen- 
tury ago, five ports were opened to the residence of 
foreigners, the Emperor caused a compend of the teach- 
ings of the sages to be published in verse as an antidote 
to their doctrines. Indeed, so highly esteemed is verse 
as a vehicle for instruction that a popular encyclopaedia, 
in forty volumes, is composed entirely in verse. 

Passing over minor divisions, we shall devote special 
attention to lyric poetry, of which the Chinese have pro- 
duced an enormous quantity, and in which, in the face 
of all competitors, they are able to vindicate a high posi- 
tion. 

Their lyric poetry falls, roughly, into three periods — 
ancient, mediseval and modern. Their ancient lyrics con- 
sist chiefly of a copious anthology, re-edited by Confucius, 
but not compiled by him. This anthology contains three 
hundred and six pieces — songs, ballads, heroic odes and 
sacrificial hymns. The songs and ballads are so selected 
as to reflect the manners of the several states into which 
the Empire was at that time divided. They exhibit a sim- 
plicity in social arrangements which is in strong con- 
trast with the artificial life of the present day. 

Besides epithalamial verse, which is admitted to be 
ethically correct, there are love songs and love stories 
which shocked the formal moralists of later times. We, 
with a less fettered judgment, find in them nothing to 
object to, unless it be the vapid inanity of most of them. 
As a whole, they stand in point of morality far above any 
similar collection that has come down to us from pagan 
antiquity. To secure this degree of purity, they under- 
went a Bowdlerizing process at the hands of Confucius 



78 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

or his predecessors. So confident was Confucius that all 
traces of evil had been expunged that he declared that, 
'' of these three hundred odes, there is not one that de- 
parts from the purity of thought." 

We must not think of Confucius as always discoursing 
wisdom, or as perpetually hampered by a stiff ceremonial. 
He was one of the most human of sages — a sort of 
Aviser, better Solomon, who, though he spoke more than 
" three thousand proverbs," found time to edit, if he did 
not compose, a great many charming canticles. As a 
musician, he must have enjoyed their harmonies of rhyme 
and rhythm — attractions which those ancient poems have 
entirely lost, through changes which the language has 
undergone in the lapse of ages. Here is a fragment that 
has a history: 

" A speck upon your ivory fan 
You soon may wipe away; 
But stains upon the heart or tongue 
Remain, alas, for aye." 

Hearing a young man repeat these lines from time to 
time, Confucius chose him for his son-in-law. He showed 
enough affection for his daughter to select an honest 
man for her husband ; yet he admitted into his collection, 
without note or comment, a ballad which has done much 
to perpetuate among his people a barbarous contempt for 
women: 

" When a son is born — in a lordly bed 
Wrap him in raiment of purple and red ; 
Jewels and gold for playthings bring 
For the noble boy who shall serve the king. 

" When a girl is born — in coarse cloth wound, 
With a tile for a toy, let her lie on the ground. 
In her bread and her beer be her praise or her blame 
And let her not sully her parents' good name." 



POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 79 

Had the sage but bethought himself to attach to this 
relic a little note of disapproval, how much cruelty he 
might have averted by the stroke of a pen ! 

The following song for New Year's Eve is as true to 
human sentiment to-day as it still is to the aspects of 
nature. To make it suit the season, however, we must 
remember that the date of New Year's Eve was prob- 
ably a month earlier than at present, and the latitude 
about thirty-five degrees — that of Honan: 

** The voice of the cricket is heard in the hall, 

The leaves of the forest are withered and sere; 
My sad spirits droop at those chirruping notes, 
So thoughtlessly sounding the knell of the year. 

" Yet why should we sigh at the change of a date. 
When life's flowing on in a full, steady tide? 
Come, let us be merry with those that we love; 
For pleasure in measure there is no one to chide." 

This is the oldest temperance ode in the world. It was 
designed, as the Chinese say, to curb the excesses incident 
to the season, by recommending " pleasure in measure." 
It probably antedates the founding of Rome. 

Before dismissing these ancient odes, it should be said 
that a characteristic of their structure is the refrain. 
They generally start with a poetic image, such as the 
plaintive cry of a deer, or the note of a water-fowl ; which 
is repeated at the beginning or end of each stanza, albeit 
without any very clear relation to the theme of the poem. 
Burns's famous song, " Green grow the rashes, O ! " is 
in this respect thoroughly Chinese. Tennyson's graver 
melody, " Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, 
O sea ! " is equally in keeping with the style of a Chinese 
lyric. The whole piece is pervaded by the moaning of 
the sea, suggesting more than words: 



8o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

"And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me." 

There is a book of elegies, of a somewhat later age, 
which is held in much esteem. It is chiefly the work of 
one man, Chu Yuan, who proved his genius, or at least 
impressed it on posterity, by drowning himself. 

Passing over this, we come to the beginning of China's 
Middle Age, the dynasty of Han, under which the re- 
vival of letters quickened every kind of intellectual ac- 
tivity. The poetry of this period shows a notable advance 
toward perfection of form ; though its high qualities may 
not be discoverable in the specimens which I have to offer. 

The first is by Chia I, a Minister of State who was 
sent into banishment about 200 b. c. In spirit and inci- 
dent, it reminds one of Poe's " Raven ; " but the task of 
finding out how Poe got wind of his Chinese predecessor 
must be left to others : 

*' In dismal, gloomy, crumbling halls, 
Betwixt moss-covered, reeking walls. 
An exiled poet lay — 

" On his bed of straw reclining. 
Half despairing, half repining — 
When, athwart the window sill, 
In flew a bird of omen ill, 

And seemed inclined to stay. 

" To my book of occult learning 
Suddenly I thought of turning, 
All the mystery to know 
Of that shameless owl or crow. 
That would not go away. 

** * Wherever such a bird shall enter 
*Tis sure some power above has sent her/ 
So said the mystic book, ' to show 
The human dweller forth must go;' 
But where, it did not say. 



POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 8i 

** Then anxiously the bird addressing, 
And my ignorance confessing, 
* Gentle bird, in mercy deign 
The will ofi Fate to me explain. 
Where is my future way ? * 

" It raised its head as if 'twere seeking 
To answer me by simply speaking; 
Then folded up its sable wing, 
Nor did it utter anything; 

But breathed a * Well-a-day ! * 

" More eloquent than any diction, 
That simple sigh produced conviction; 
Furnishing to me the key 
Of the awful mystery 

That on my spirit lay. 

" * Fortune's wheel is ever turning. 
To human eye there's no discerning 
Weal or woe in any state; 
Wisdom is to bide your fate.* 

That is what it seemed to say 

By that simple ' Well-a-day.' " 

A hundred years later, we have a touching ode ad- 
dressed to his v^ife by Su Wu, w^hen on the eve of a 
perilous embassy to the Grand Khan of Tartary: 

** Twin trees whose boughs together twine. 
Two birds that guard one nest. 
We'll soon be far asunder torn. 
As sunrise from the West. 

" Hearts knit in childhood's innocence, 
Long bound in Hymen's ties. 
One goes to distant battle-fields, 
One sits at home and sighs. 



82 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

*' Like carrier dove, though seas divide, 
I'll seek my lonely mate; 
But if afar I find a grave 

You'll mourn my hapless fate. 

"To us the future's all unknown; 
In memory seek relief. 
Come, touch the chords you know so well, 
And let them soothe our grief." 

It Speaks well for the domestic affections of the Chinese 
that the sentiment of this piece has so penetrated their 
literature that it has had imitators in every age, even 
down to our own days. The Commissioner Lin, whose 
high-handed proceedings provoked the Opium War, on 
going into banishment, addressed a similar adieu to his 
wife. 

Passing over another century, we come to Pan Chih 
Yu, the Sappho of China, a gifted lady of the Court, B. c. 
i8. Though several of her compositions are extant, the 
best known is an ode inscribed on a fan, and presented 
to the Emperor: 

" Of fresh, new silk, all snowy white, 
And round as harvest moon; 
A pledge of purity and love, 
A small but welcome boon. 

** While Summer lasts, borne in the hand, 
Or folded on the breast, 
'Twill gently soothe thy burning brow, 
And charm thee to thy rest. 

** But, ah ! When Autumn frosts descend, 
And Winter's winds blow cold, 
No longer sought, no longer loved, 
'Twill lie in dust and mold. 



POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 83 

* This silken fan, then, deign accept, 
Sad emblem of my lot — 
Caressed and fondled for an hour, 
Then speedily forgot." 



After an interval of two centuries, we come to the 
period of the " Three Kingdoms." 

A weak tyrant, who occupied one of the thrones, was 
jealous of the talents of his younger brother, who had the 
reputation of being the first poet of his day. Reproach- 
ing the poet for thinking too highly of himself, he threat- 
ened him with death, unless he should on the instant com- 
pose a quatrain that would be accepted as a proof of 
genius. The young man strode slowly across the hall, his 
footsteps keeping time to the cadence of his verse, while 
he pronounced these lines: 

** Are there not beans in yon boiling pot, 
And bean-stalks are burning below? 
Now why, when they spring from one parent root, 
Should they scorch each other so?" 

The dynasty of T'ang (618-905 a. d.) witnessed the 
rise of the drama, and at the same time the culmination 
of lyric poetry. Tu Fu and Li Po were the Dryden and 
Pope of that age. The former, though for ten centuries 
he has enjoyed an immense popularity, had for a long 
time to struggle with poverty. " For thirty years I rode 
an ass," is a pathetic confession, which I shall not mar 
by the addition of another line from his voluminous 
works. 

His great rival was more fortunate. Welcomed at 
court in his early prime, and praised by posterity as the 
brightest star that ever shone in the poetical firmament of 
China, Li Po is best known as a sort of Oriental Anac- 



84 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

reon, a prince of bacchanalian bards. We have not space 
for more than two specimens of his verse — an epistle 
from a young wife to her husband in the army, evidently 
inspired by the farewell sonnet of Su Wu, and an ode on 
drinking alone by moonlight. The first is marked by the 
simplicity of Wordsworth; the second by the humor of 
Hood. 

A SOLDIER'S WIFE TO HER HUSBAND. 

" 'Twas many a year ago — 
How I recall the day! — 
When you, my own true love, 
Came first with me to play. 

"A little child was I, 

My head a mass of curls; 
I gathered daisies sweet, 
Along with other girls. 

" You rode a bamboo horse. 

And deemed yourself a knight — 
With paper helm and shield 
And wooden sword bedight. 

" Thus we together grew, 

And we together played — 
Yourself a giddy boy, 
And I a thoughtless maid. 

" At fourteen I was wed, 

And if one called my name 
As quick as lightning flash 
The crimson blushes came. 

"'Twas not till we had passed 

A year of married life, 

My heart was knit to yours 

In joy to be your wife. 



POETS AND POETRY IN CHINA 85 

"Another year, alas! 

And you had joined your chiet 
While I was left at home 
In solitary grief. 

"When victory crowns your arms. 
And I your triumph learn, 
What bliss for me to fly 
To welcome your return ! " 



ON DRINKING ALONE BY MOONLIGHT. 

"Here are flowers and here is wine; 
But there's no friend with me to join 
Hand to hand and heart to heart, 
In one full bowl before we part. 

" Rather then, than drink alone, 
I'll make bold to ask the Moon 
To condescend to lend her face. 
The moment and the scene to grace. 

" Lo ! she answers and she brings 
My shadow on her silver wings — 
That makes three, and we shall be, 
I ween, a merry company. 

" The modest Moon declines the cup. 
My shadow promptly takes it up; 
And when I dance, my shadow fleet 
Keeps measure with my twinkling feet. 

" Although the Moon declines to tipple. 
She dances in yon shining ripple; 
And when I sing, my festive song 
The echoes of the Moon prolong. 

" Say, when shall we next meet together ? 
Surely not in cloudy weather. 
For you, my boon companions dear. 
Come only when the sky is clear." 



86 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

A text book used in Chinese schools is called " Selec- 
tions from a Thousand Bards." The authors are of all 
ages, but it would not be difficult to make a catalogue of 
a thousand belonging to this dynasty. 

Of the present dynasty,* the most distinguished poet, 
if not the most gifted, is the Emperor Chien Lung, who 
closed his reign of a full cycle almost exactly a hundred 
years ago. 

* Pao and Tung, late Ministers of State, were poets of no mean 
order. Both presented me with their works, as did several bards 
of less note. Not to enumerate other gifts of the kind, of which 
I have been the recipient, two old men (one ninety years of age), 
eminent as scholars and wearing the buttons of official rank, 
called on me lately, as I was passing through Shanghai, each bend- 
ing under a load of original poems, which he desired to present. 
It was a great honor, but it was something of a burden also, for 
I had to buy another trunk to carry their books to Peking. Then, 
am I not expected to clothe them in English dress, and to make 
them known beyond the seas? — a thing which space forbids, at 
present. 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 

ASTRONOMERS tell us that, though Venus is 
so much nearer than Mars, it is impossible to 
obtain a clear view of her surface, on account 
of her dazzling brightness. Do we not experience a 
similar difficulty in contemplating the great luminaries 
of the human race ? In their case, an atmosphere of myth 
always gathers round the nucleus of history, concealing 
and distorting their features. 

This was the case with Him to whom the Western 
world owes its deliverance from the darkness of heathen- 
ism. Outside of the authentic records left us by the Four 
Evangelists, there was extant for a long time a floating 
mass of fable which it cost no little labor to expose and 
suppress. It was so with the wisest of the sages of 
Greece. How different the aspect which Socrates pre-^ 
sents in the simple narrative of Xenophon from that which 
he is made to assume in the voluminous Dialogues of 
Plato! In the latter, we know that we are not reading 
history ; yet they do contain historic elements, — Many of 
the doctrines and much of the manner of propounding 
them are derived from Socrates, even if the words in 
which they are clothed belong wholly to his eloquent 
disciple. 

Such, is the case of Confucius. So great was the 
ascendency to which he attained, within the five or six 
centuries succeeding his death, that it became the fashion 
to invoke his name for any document for which his fol- 

87 



88 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

lowers desired to conciliate popular favor. Especially 
was this the habit with that large class of writers, the 
Po Tze, whom we may describe as the Sophists of China. 
Take up a volume of Leitze or Chuangtze, and you 
meet with anecdotes, apologues, and discourses, put forth 
under the name of Confucius, — all of which are so evi- 
dently fictitious as to suggest a query whether they were 
ever intended to be taken as historical. These writers 
deal in a similar way, and some of them to a much greater 
extent, with the name of Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor, 
— a personage who belongs altogether to the realm of 
myth. 

The pains-taking and conscientious authors of the Lun 
Yii, the Confucian Memorabilia, have made the world 
familiar with the Sage, who always spoke with delibera- 
tion, and acted with dignity; who had such a weakness 
for ginger that he was ** never tired of eating it ; " and 
who was so scrupulous as to petty proprieties that he 
** never sat down if his mat was awry." To these trifling 
details, they add that, at home, he wore a tunic with one 
sleeve shorter than the other, and slept in a night-gown 
fifty per cent longer than his body; that, on going to 
bed, he ceased to talk; and, not to cite other traits of 
aspect and carriage, the conviction is forced upon us 
that we have here glimpses of a real man. 

But turn to the outline of biography, familiar to every 
Chinese school-boy. Passing over the supernatural por- 
tents connected with his birth and death, we find the 
statement that Confucius was prime minister of Lu for 
three months; that, within that time, he eflfected such 
a reformation that precious things might be dropped in 
the street without risk of misappropriation ; that shepherds 
refrained from watering their sheep before driving them 
to market, lest they should draw more than their proper 



^i^^$ 






SHRINE AND TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA ^^89 

weight; that prisons were empty, and tribunals idle; 
that men were honest, and women chaste; and that the 
little state began to acquire such a preponderance that 
its neighbors resorted to unworthy stratagems to under- 
mine the influence of the great reformer. These and 
other incidents, either wholly fictitious or greatly exag- 
gerated, are found in the sober pages of Sze Ma Ch'ien, 
the Herodotus of China. 

THE SAGE TAUGHT BY A CHILD. 

Many of these incidents have been taken up and further 
expanded by later writers. For instance, the historian 
records that '' Confucius took lessons from Hsiang T'o." 
Now, Hsiang T'o was a precocious child of seven years ; 
and the record probably means nothing more than that 
the Sage condescended to take a hint from the lad, or 
to make use of him as an illustration in teaching, as a 
Greater Teacher did, when, his disciples contending for 
precedence, he set a little child before them as an object 
lesson in the graces of faith and humility. 

Here is a specimen of the stories that have grown out 
of this obscure incident: — 

Confucius, it is said, seeing a little boy playing with 
tiles in the street, called to him to make way for his 
carriage. " Not so," said the boy ; " I am building a 
city. A city wall does not give way for a cart, but a 
cart goes round the wall." '' You seem to be uncom- 
monly clever for your years," said Confucius, surprised 
at the self-possession of the lad. "How so?" said the 
lad ; " a hare at the age of three days can scamper over 
the fields, and should I not know a thing or two at the 
age of seven years? If you will tell me how many stars 
there are in heaven, I shall know more than I do now." 
" Why do you inquire about things so far away ? " said 



90 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the Sage ; " ask about something near at hand, and I 
will answer you." ** Then," said the boy, " please tell 
me how many hairs you have in your eye-brows." The 
Sage was non-plussed ; and, giving the lad a kindly smile, 
he drove silently away. 

Another story, derived from the same source, is found 
in the works of Leitze. 

Confucius met with two boys, who were discussing 
the question whether the sun is more distant in the 
morning or at noon. '' It appears larger in the morning," 
said one; *' and the nearer an object is, the larger it 
appears." " But," replied the other, " is not the sun 
hotter at noon than in the morning? And does not a 
hot object give more heat when near, than when far 
away ? " Unable to agree, they referred the matter to 
the Sage; and he, with characteristic caution, left the 
question undecided; or, as one version has it, he was 
unable to decide, and the boys formed a low opinion of 
his intelligence.* 

In treating of the apocryphal literature relating to 
Confucius, it is important to distinguish that which 
originated before the '' burning of the books " from that 
which belongs to a later date. Works that preceded that 
catastrophe have, of course, the better chance of con- 
taining genuine traditions, — especially if, as in the case 

* The German poet Claudius puts a similar dispute into the 
mouth of two rustics: — 

Wie gross meinst du die Sonne sei? 
So gross vielleicht wie ein futter Heu 

etc., etc. 

How big, asked Hans, is the sun, do you say? 
As big, said Sep, as a load of hay. 
No ! no ! cried Hans, not half so big, 
About the size of an ostrich Qgg. 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 91 

of Leitze and Chuangtze, they belong to the Taoist 
school, which was not proscribed, and therefore escaped 
the conflagration. In the writers last named, the reck- 
less use of imagination vitiates their authority. In 
Chuangtze, there are more than fifty references to Con- 
fucius and his disciples, not one of which possesses any 
historical value. 

In works of the later period, reminiscences of the 
Sage are far more multiplied; but their genuineness is 
not merely questionable on account of their remoteness 
from the times of their subject. Is it not obvious that an 
occurrence Hke the ''fires of Ch'in," (240 b. c.) the 
avowed aim of which was to extirpate the teachings of 
Confucius, would open a wide field for the production 
of supposititious literature? So well, indeed, did the 
tyrant succeed in his purpose that only a few manuscripts 
escaped; and they, by being hidden for generations in 
the walls of houses. 

A PREMIUM ON FORGERY. 

On the accession of the Han Dynasty, when the first 
attempt was made to wake the lost books from their ashes, 
the same edict, which caused old men to ransack their 
brain for pages committed to memory in boyhood, en- 
couraged others to exercise their inventive faculties to 
produce a plausible substitute. The rewards offered for 
discoveries of hidden Classics acted as a premium on 
forgery. 

All the circumstances of the time were adapted to 
favor imposture. Under a new dynasty, letters blos- 
somed afresh ; and the subject which appealed most 
powerfully to the inventive faculties of the learned was 
the huge void left by the missing books. Pecuniary re- 
wards, imperial favor, and popular esteem, all conspired 



92 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

to incite them to effort ; and aiil inveniam aut faciam be- 
came a motto with thousands of zealous scholars. 

Zeal for the Confucian school, which, for a time over- 
shadowed by Taoism, now began to recover its lost 
ground, supplied an additional motive; and scholars, 
who wished to give currency to their own ideas, did not 
scruple to publish them under the names of the apostles 
of Confucianism, or even under that of the great Master 
himself. 

The Arabs of Egypt are not more expert in manu-^ 
facturing antique mummies than were the students of 
Han in the construction of ancient classics. Not to speak 
of spurious portions foisted into several of the canonical 
books, two at least of the works now reckoned among the 
Thirteen Classics are admitted to be of apocryphal origin. 
These are the Li Chi, or Book of Rites, and Hsiao Ching, 
or Manual of Filial Duty. 

THE BOOK OF RITES. 

This has had the good fortune to be included in the 
five Ching, for what reason it is difficult to divine, unless 
because it professes to record ritual observances which 
were in vogue in the period covered by the other four. 
It enjoys, therefore, a great authority from the eminence 
to which it has been raised. 

More than any other work, it has shaped the external 
form of Chinese civilization, — preserving its essential 
unity under all vicissitudes, prescribing alike official 
forms and private manners. 

The rules of the Li Chi are not, indeed, held as obliga- 
tory, any more than are the rituals of the Old Testa- 
ment in the practice of Christendom; but, never having 
been formally abrogated, a larger proportion of them has 
entered into the life of the modern Chinese. 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 93 

The compilers of this work no doubt found much genu- 
ine material drifting in a state of wreckage down the 
stream of time, and they had no hesitation in supplying 
from their own resources whatever might be required 
for its reconstruction. Nor did they, in any case, take 
pains to point out the boundary between the old and the 
new. What they discovered was at best a torso, and their 
ambition was to present it as a complete statue. 

On reading it one is struck by a great inequality of 
style; parts are crabbed and obscure, while other parts 
flow in a pellucid stream, characteristic of an advanced 
stage of literary art. Take, for example, the chapter en- 
titled Ju Hsing, the " Character of a Scholar," and you 
have an eloquent exposition of the conduct becoming a 
man of letters. Again, in the Yueh Chi, you have a rhap- 
sody on music, without a single indication which might 
enable a student to reproduce the music of the ancients. 
Both discourses are credited to Confucius, but the style 
is too modern by at least four centuries. 

In some parts of the collection, the Sage is made to 
appear as interlocutor in a dialogue ; and occasionally an 
incident is related as a basis for moral reflections. Such 
an incident is that of a family who exposed themselves 
to be devoured by wild beasts rather than submit to the 
exactions of mandarins. 

" Mark that, my children," said Confucius, turning to 
his disciples ; " oppressive ofHcers are dreaded more than 
tigers." 

The incident is sufficiently striking, and its moral is 
worthy of a Sage. The story of the serpent-catcher, by 
Liu Tsung Yuan, is based on it, and enforces the same 
moral in the elegant diction of a later age, exerting a 
restraining influence on the rapacity of officials, and pro- 
moting a spirit of independence among the people. 



94 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In itself, the tiger story is not incredible. In Oregon, 
I was told of a woman who had lost three husbands by 
grizzly bears. Perhaps one attraction to the soil of the 
new territory was just this facility of divorce? 

THE BOOK OF FILIAL DUTY. 

Like the Li Chi, the Manual of Filial Duty dates from 
the first century b. c. ; and, like that work, it is reputed 
to have been discovered in the wall of a house belonging 
to a descendant of Confucius. In form, it consists of a 
series of discourses, addressed by the Sage to his disciple 
Tsengtze, — who served him as amanuensis, and who now 
wears the proud title of Ch'iian Sheng, — " Transmitter 
of the Sage." 

In style, the book bears the impress of the age of its 
alleged discovery, being more modem by several cen- 
turies than that of its reputed author. It is remarkable 
for the fullness with which it expounds the working of 
filial piety as a social regulator in all the relations of life. 
Though the Christian finds in it no sufficient substitute 
for the prompting and restraining influence of faith in 
an omnipresent God, he must acknowledge that in China 
filial piety might be made a useful auxiliary to the higher 
sentiment. The decay of that higher sentiment (if it 
ever existed in China) was no doubt owing to the rise 
of polytheism ; and philosophers were fain to seek in 
filial piety a force which should serve as the prop of 
morality. 

The state makes it the basis of its legislation ; and this 
book, whose canonicity the state has good reasons for 
upholding, is therefore a corner-stone in the social fabric. 
The very phrase '' to rule the empire by filial piety,'' 
so often seen in official documents — is found in the 
eighth Chapter; and so beautifully is the idea developed 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 95 

in the proem that I cannot forbear citing a few 
lines : — 

" One day, when the Master was at leisure and Tseng- 
tze in attendance, he said, — ' The ancient Sages possessed 
a perfect method for governing the empire, by which 
the people were made to live in harmony without dis- 
cord between high and low ; — do you understand it ? ' 
Tsengtze rose and replied : — ' I am dull of apprehen- 
sion ; how should I understand it ? ' ' Sit down then,' 
said the Master, ' and I will teach you. Filial piety is the 
root of virtue, and the fountain of moral teaching. It 
begins with due care for the body because received from 
your parents; it culminates in conduct which will make 
your name immortal, and reflect glory on your father and 
mother. Its beginning is the service of your parents ; its 
middle, the service of the sovereign ; and its end, the for- 
mation of character.' " 

The eighteen short chapters which follow do nothing 
more than amplify this text. They are so brief and pithy 
that school children commit them to memory, and accept 
them as rules of conduct for their subsequent life. The 
effect of the doctrines, thus set forth, can hardly be over- 
estimated; and, in general, they are consonant with the 
teachings of the Sage as given in records of unquestioned 
authenticity. The Hsiao Ching, therefore, though apocry- 
phal, does him no injustice, unless it be in one point, viz., 
— in making conformity to the ordinances and even the 
costume of the ancient Kings an obligation of filial piety. 
It is known that Confucius was somewhat conservative; 
but it may be affirmed that he never enjoined such unrea- 
soning submission to antiquity. Does he not teach, in the 
first section of the Ta Hsileh, the Great Study, that the 
chief duty of a Prince is to effect the renovation of his 
people? How I have longed to see the rulers of China 



96 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

wake up to the fact that their Great Teacher never in- 
tended them to be fast bound to the wheels of the ancient 
kings. 

THE FAMILY TRADITIONS. 

The last of these apocryphal writings which we shall 
notice at present is in some respects the most important 
of all. It is the Chia Yu, or Family Traditions. It ap- 
peared between two and three centuries later than the 
Li Chi and Hsiao Ching; — i. e., in the period of the Three 
Kingdoms. Its fortune, though less brilliant than that of 
those two most lucky forgeries, has been such as to sur- 
pass the ambition of its so-called editor. For though not, 
like them, set in the constellation of sacred classics, it is 
held to be " deutero-canonical ; " and, as such, it stands 
in the Imperial catalogues at the head of Jii Chia, or or- 
thodox writers of the Confucian School. The editor, 
Wang Su, frankly states the object he has in view in 
giving these Traditions to the world. ** Errors are ram- 
pant," he says in his preface, *' and the Confucian high- 
way is overgrown with brambles. Why should not I 
make an effort to clear it of obstructions. If no one, 
then, chooses to follow it, it will not be my fault." 

The zeal expressed in these words is not fitted to in- 
spire confidence; and, when he informs us that he has 
opportunely obtained these Traditions in manuscript from 
a descendant of the Sage in the twenty-second generation, 
are we not disposed to regard the discovery as rather too 
opportune? Why should a member of the family of 
K'ung, after the lapse of seven centuries, be more likely 
to possess genuine traditions than any other of the " hun- 
dred names ? " That the work as a whole is spurious, 
is admitted by native critics. That which secures for it 
unrivalled popularity is; — 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 97 

I. — Its worthy aim; 2. — Its pleasing style; 3. — Some- 
thing like an element of real tradition, derived from vari- 
ous sources ; 4. — Adroit insertion and skilful amplification 
of authentic records. 

Notwithstanding its multifarious contents, it is easy 
to separate the few grains of golden sand carried down 
by the stream of time from the bright clay in which the 
author has wrapped them up, with a view to increasing 
their bulk and weight. 

A STRANGE MONITOR. 

As a good example of his method, I may mention 
the manner in which he deals with a brief notice which 
he finds in Hsiintze, who lived three centuries before. 
Confucius had seen a water-vessel, which, when empty, 
hung obliquely ; when half-full, hung vertically ; but, on 
being filled, turned over and spilled its contents. It was 
said to have been placed on the right of the Prince's 
throne as a warning against pride, or fullness, which 
" precedes a fall." 

Taking this for a text, Wang Su expands it into a 
discourse of considerable length, a copy of which I ob- 
tained in Japan, where it had evidently been used as an 
inscription in a princely or imperial palace. 

It is, however, in paraphrases on the Lun Yu that he 
most frequently displays his peculiar skill. A few illustra- 
tions may not be out of place. 

THREE WISHES. 

Borrowing a hint from a passage in which Confucius 
calls on his disciples to describe the employ which each 
would find to his taste, our author shows us the Master 
with three of his disciples on a hill top. Enjoying the 



98 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

boundless prospect, he says to them : — " Here our 
thoughts fly unfettered in all directions. Here you may 
give wing to fancy, and clothe your wildest dreams in 
words. Now, let each of you name the situation, or 
achievement, which would most completely fill the meas- 
ure of his ambition." 

Tze Lu declares for feats of prowess, choosing above 
all things to be able with a small force to humble a 
proud foe; and with his own hand to capture the leader 
of the opposing camp. Tze Kung, the finest talker of the 
School, bent on proving the tongue mightier than the 
sword, enlarging on his friend's picture of opposing 
armies ready to join in bloody conflict, adds that it would 
be his ambition to come between the hostile camps, to 
disarm them both by mere force of argument, showing 
each his true interest, and by skilful diplomacy to bring 
about an adjustment of their differences. '' I should 
wish," he says, " no higher glory than that of such a 
peaceful victory." 

Confucius commends his eloquence, and then calls on 
Yen Hui, his favorite disciple, the St. John of his School. 
With unassuming modesty, Yen declines to engage in 
competition with his arrogant companions ; but, when 
urged by the Master, he says : — '' My desire would be to 
find a good Prince, who would accept me for his Vizier. 
I would teach his people justice, propriety, and benevo- 
lence ; and lead them no longer to build walls, or dig 
moats, but to turn their weapons of war into instruments 
of husbandry." 

" Admirable," exclaimed Confucius ; " such is the 
power of virtue." 

In the Memorabilia, or Lun Yii, the Sage gives his 
suffrage to a disciple, who draws a charming picture of 
the pleasures of idleness. Wang Su has re-cast the en- 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 99 

tire scene, in order to give it a conclusion more worthy 
of the nation's teacher, emphasizing the sentiment ex- 
pressed by Longfellow : — 

Were half the force that keeps the world in terror, 
Were half the wealth that's spent on camps and courts, 

Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals and forts. 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE. 

The famous saying of the great Agnostic — '' We know 
not Hfe, how can we know death? " — supplies an equally 
fine text for artful amplification. It is accordingly ex- 
panded into the following dialogue : — 

" Do the dead retain a conscious existence ? " inquired 
Tze Kung. 

*' If," replied Confucius, " I should say they do, I 
fear the pious and filial would neglect their living parents 
through devotion to the dead. If, on the other hand, I 
should say they do not, I fear that the unfilial might 
so far disregard their duties to the dead as to leave their 
parents unburied." 

With this ambiguous answer, he closed his lips, and 
left his disciples on the horns of a torturing dilemma. 

THE LESSON OF RUNNING WATER. 

In the Liin Yil, we are told that the Sage, looking on 
a running stream, exclaimed : — " Behold an emblem of 
time; it ceases not, day or night." 

In the Traditions, Confucius was gazing Intently on 
the eastward flowing current of the Yellow River. A 
disciple, inquiring why a superior man always loves to 
look on the surface of a great stream, he replies : — " Be- 
cause its flow never ceases ; it nourishes all living things, 
and yet without labor. Its water is like virtue; it seeks 



100 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

a low place; yet cities and palaces follow its course. It 
is like goodness, vast and inexhaustible; it is like truth, 
gtoing straight forward without fear, even though a 
plunge of a hundred fathoms may be before it. This 
is why the superior man loves to look on the face of the 
flowing waters." 

FOOLI.SH QUESTIONS AND WISE ANSWERS. 

In the Lun Yii, Ai Kung, Duke of Lu, asks one or two 
questions. In the Traditions, he is made to ask a score 
or more. Here are two, — both frivolous; but they elicit 
wise answers: — 

" Will you tell me," said the Duke, " what kind of 
crown was worn by the Emperor Shun ? " After a pro- 
longed silence, Confucius replied, but not until he was 
urged to speak : — " I was silent, because I do not know 
what kind of garments Shun wore; but I do know the 
principles on which he ruled his people. Why should not 
Your Highness inquire about them ? " On another oc- 
casion, the Duke said to Confucius : — " I have heard of a 
man, who, on removing to a new house, forgot to take 
his wife. Was there ever a case of greater forgetful- 
ness ? " " Yes," replied Confucius ; " it is that of the 
man who forgets himself." 

TWO VIEWS OF LIFE. 

A fine story, which Wang Su borrows from Leitze, 
is that of an old man of ninety, who, being asked why, 
under the burdens of age, poverty, and toil, he was still 
able to sing so merrily, replied : — " I have many reasons 
for feeling happy, but the principal are these, viz : — That 
I have come into life as a man; that I have reached a 
good old age ; and that I am now soon to be released by 
the hand of death." 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA loi 

After relating this without acknowledgment, our au- 
thor invents one in a similar style : — 

Passing near a river, Confucius heard the voice of 
weeping. Overtaking an old man, from whom the voice 
proceeded, he inquired the cause of his distress. 

*' They are three," replied the man ; " I have failed 
in three things, which it is now too late to mend, and 
nothing remains but unavailing remorse. 

When young, I went wandering over the world In 
quest of knowledge; and, when I returned home, my 
parents were dead. 

In mature years, I served the Prince of Ch'i; but the 
Prince ruined himself by pride and debauchery, and I was 
unable to check his downward course. 

In my life-time, I have had many friends, but I failed 
to attach them to me by a sincere and lasting affection; 
and now, in my old age, they have all forsaken me. Of 
these three errors, the greatest was the neglect of my 
parents." 

Yielding to a fresh transport of grief, the old man 
threw himself into the water and perished. " Mark 
this," said Confucius, turning to his disciples; and that 
very day thirteen of them went home to serve their 
parents. 

In general, stories and discourses which re-appear in 
the Traditions, display a marked improvement on their 
originals; — at least, in literary finish, though in some 
instances " expanded gold exchanges solid strength for 
feeble splendor." 

Thus far, we have looked on the finer side of the 
tapestry. Let us now turn to its seamy side, as it is 
necessary to do in order to complete the evidence of 
patch-work. 



102 THE LORE OF CATHAY 



An imaginary Niagara. 

On the road from Wei to Lu, Confucius comes to a 
cataract, thirty fathoms in height, which creates a whirl- 
pool ninety li (30 miles) in circumference, and so furious 
is the current that neither fish nor tortoise can live in it; 
yet an intrepid swimmer, more lucky than Captain Webb 
at Niagara, succeeds in crossing. This passage suggests 
the wild fancy of Chuangtze; and, on turning to the 
older writer, we find it there, but less extravagant in its 
terms. Wang Su uses it to point a vapid moral ; but 
he has blundered in admitting it among authentic tra- 
ditions. 

WISE QUESTIONS AND FOOLISH ANSWERS. 

In the Lun Yil, it is said there were four things of 
which Confucius never spoke, viz. : — Fairy tales, feats of 
strength, outrageous crimes, and the gods (or the super- 
natural). A book exists, which takes these for its sub- 
ject, and bears the title. Things of which Confucius did 
not Speak. There are not a few pages in these alleged 
Traditions that might be grouped under such a rubric. 

One of the Princes asking him a question, Confucius 
launches into a dissertation on giants and dwarfs, in 
which he says the latter grow to three feet and the former 
to thirty. 

Prince Chao, of Ch'u, in crossing a river, picks up 
a floating fruit resembling a cocoa-nut, and sends a 
messenger to learn its nature from Confucius. Without 
the least hesitation, the omniscient Sage gives the name 
of the fruit, and adds that the Prince may eat it, as it 
is a fruit of good omen, which only falls into the hands 
of one destined to be a leader of the nations. When 
a disciple asks him how he happens to know these facts 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 103 

so exactly, he replies that he once heard a nursery rhyme 
to that effect: — it was prophetic, and this he knew to 
be its fulfilment. 

In another passage, he explains the appearance of a 
strange bird in the same way. It was called Shang Yang, 
had only one leg, and, as he learned from a childish 
ditty, its arrival portended a deluge of rain. 

These instances, with many others of the same kind, 
may be taken as completing the evidence that the so- 
called Traditions are a transparent fiction. If I have 
dwelt too long on this particular work, it is on account 
of the influence it exerts in fixing the popular ideal of 
the Sage, from the credit it enjoys of heading, as it does 
in official catalogues, the entire body of philosophers. 

There are other works which contain similar fictions; 
but time fails to enumerate, not to say, examine them. 

Taken as a whole, the volume of these apocryphal 
writings far exceeds that of the authentic records; the 
gaseous envelope surrounding the luminary is greater 
than its solid nucleus. But it may be doubted whether 
these fabrications, however well meant, have not de- 
tracted from the essential greatness of China's model 
wise man. 

CONFUCIUS NO MYTH. 

Let us conclude by briefly indicating a few points in 
which the apocryphal Confucius differs from the real 
founder of Chinese civilization; for, at this stage of our 
discussion, I need hardly say that Confucius was no 
myth. He is so far historical that he, and not Sze Ma, 
is the Father of Chinese History. His words and acts 
were minutely noted by contemporary pens, hundreds of 
his pupils contributing to transmit his teachings and per- 
petuate his memory. The attempt to make him a mythical 



104 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

personage, like Pan Ku or Nii Kua, may afford an agree- 
able exercise for the leisure hours of an ingenious stu- 
dent; but it can no more unsettle the received convic- 
tion than Archbishop Whately's Historic Doubts con- 
cerning Napoleon could relegate the Corsican Conqueror 
to the companionship of Hercules and Bacchus. But, in 
the double personality that goes under that venerated 
name, it is time to point out the features in which the 
mythical Confucius differs from the historical. I limit 
myself to five: — 

THE REAL AND THE MYTHICAL COMPARED. 

I. — The real Sage was noted for modesty; the fictitious 
is a prig, who assumes to know everything. The myth- 
makers, who have attempted to display the universality 
of his knowledge, have succeeded in exposing their own 
ignorance. 

2. — The real Confucius was a man of few words ; his 
style, laconic and grave. The mythical is loquacious, and 
often occupied with trifles. 

3. — The real Sage was reverential towards the Supreme 
Power of the Universe, but agnostic in spirit and prac- 
tice. The Confucius of these Apocryphal books is ex- 
cessively superstitious, drawing omens of the future from 
birds, beasts, and the nonsensical ditties of children. 

4. — The real Sage, when asked if it is right to repay 
injury by injury, forbids revenge. The Apocryphal is 
made to teach the vendetta in its most truculent form, 
prescribing its measure for each degree of relationship, — 
the slayer of a father to be slain at sight, even in the 
halls of an imperial palace. 

5. — The real Sage was humane, making humanity, or 
love, the first of the cardinal virtues in his moral system. 
The Apocryphal personage is cruel and unjust, putting 



THE CONFUCIAN APOCRYPHA 105 

Shao Cheng Mao to death for five reasons, — not one of 
which would justify anything more severe than dismissal 
from office; and cutting off the hands and feet of a 
mountebank, who sought to amuse two princes on the 
occasion of a public meeting. 

These Apocryphal writings contain, as I have said, 
much that is good. They must be studied to get at the 
sources of the later literature. But would it not be a 
worthy undertaking for some enlightened scholar, native 
or foreign, to sift these heterogeneous materials, and 
clear the name of the Great Master from all connection 
with the absurd, vain, and wicked things with which his 
memory has been loaded ? 



yi 

CONFUCIUS AND PLATO — A COINCIDENCE 

THE coincidence relates to a moot point of filial 
duty. In China, filial piety is recognized as 
the basis of social order. By the orthodox, 
it is even held to supply the place of religion ; so that 
" he who serves his parents at home has no need to go 
far away to burn incense to the gods." 

In the Hsiao Ching, a well-known manual for the in- 
struction of youth, it is represented as affording an incen- 
tive to the discharge of duty in all situations, giving force 
and vitality to consciences which might otherwise remain 
dormant. Thus, a soldier who runs away is unfilial ; an 
officer who is unfaithful to his prince is unfilial; and, in 
general, any conduct that entails disgrace is unfilial, be- 
cause it must of necessity reflect discredit on the parents 
of the offender. A whole system of morals is deduced 
from this root; and casuistry finds scope in inventing 
difficult situations and in reconciling conflicting obliga- 
tions. Truth is a virtue not much insisted on in Chinese 
books; and its comparative rarity brings into relief a 
class of people who vaunt their frankness, and scorn to 
palliate or extenuate in the interest of their dearest 
friends. They are called chih jen, " straight men." 

A disciple of Confucius, speaking of one of these, says 
to the Master : — *' In my country, there was a man re- 
nowned for truthfulness. When his father had stolen a 
sheep, he went to the magistrate and informed against 
him. Is his conduct to be commended ? " 

io6 



CONFUCIUS AND PLATO 107 

^' In my country," the Sage replies, " the duty of truth- 
fulness is understood differently, — A son is required in 
all cases to conceal the faults of his father, and a father 
to conceal those of his son. The obligations of truth are 
not violated by this practice." 

A hundred years later, the question was not yet re- 
garded as settled ; or, to speak more properly, as with all 
moral questions, the old battles had to be fought over 
again. 

Mencius was the oracle of the age, and one of his dis- 
ciples brought up the subject by stating a hypothetical 
case. ** Suppose," he said, " the father of the Emperor, 
being a private man, should commit murder. Is it the 
duty of the Criminal Judge to seize and condemn him ? " 

'* Without doubt," replied Mencius. 

" But then, how could the Emperor endure to see his 
father treated in that way ? When the wise Shun was on 
the throne, if his villainous old father, Ku Sou, had com- 
mitted murder, and was in danger of being condemned by 
Kao Yao, what would Shun have done ? " 

" Shun," replied the teacher, ** would have taken his 
father on his back and fled to the borders of the sea. 
Dwelling there in obscurity, and rejoicing that he had 
saved the life of his parent, he w^ould have forgotten 
that he ever filled a throne." 

Mencius, who formulated the doctrines of his school, 
goes in this passage a step beyond the teachings of his 
Master. The latter confined the duty of a child toward 
a parent, guilty of a crime, to the passive part of con- 
cealment. The former gives it an active form, — requir- 
ing a son, on behalf of a parent, to do all in his power 
to defeat the ends of justice. But when, in this dilemma, 
he sets himself in opposition to the law, he is no longer 
fit to be a prince; he should abdicate the throne, to win 



io8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the crown of filial piety ; for, according to Mencius, filial 
duty primes all others. 

A case, analogous to the first of these, forms the sub- 
ject of Enthyphron, one of the Dialogues of Plato. Soc- 
rates, going to the court of King's Bench, meets Eu- 
thyphron, and learns with horror that he has come for the 
express purpose of denouncing his own father as guilty 
of a capital crime. 

A hired laborer, having killed another in a drunken 
brawl, the father of the accuser had him bound hand- 
and-foot and thrown into a pit, where the next morning 
he was found dead. Euthyphron saw in the hapless vic- 
tim, not a chattel or a broken tool, but a fellow-man un- 
justly slain; while, in the murderer, he recognized, not 
a parent, but a criminal. 

There is something chivalrous and noble in his taking 
up the cause of humanity, in opposition to the narrower 
claims of family. But it detracts from his merit that he 
is fully conscious of the hean role which he has assumed. 

Socrates, who as usual expresses the sentiments of the 
author, is not dazzled by this splendid instance of public 
virtue triumphing over private feeling. After passing the 
ideas and motives of the hero through the sieve of his 
dialectic, he shows him that those instincts which he 
despises are the voice of nature ; and that, in spite of his 
assumption of superior knowledge, he neither knows what 
he is to believe concerning the gods, nor vv^hat duty the 
gods require of him. 

" The victim," said Socrates, " must have been one of 
your near relatives ; otherwise, you would not have been 
able to overcome your natural repugnance to denouncing 
your father." 

" Nothing is more ridiculous," Euthyphron replied, 
"than to suppose that it makes any diflference whether 



CONFUCIUS AND PLATO 109 

the victim is a relative or a stranger. The whole question 
is, whether the homicide was justifiable or not. If it was 
not, then it was my duty to denounce the perpetrator, no 
matter how closely connected with me; for it would be 
contamination to associate with such a person, instead of 
clearing myself by denouncing him." " My relations," 
he adds, " view this proceeding as impious and unholy ; 
not knowing the nature of the gods, nor the real distinc- 
tion between things holy and unholy." 

" But," asked Socrates, " are you sure that you under- 
stand the nature of the gods, and the distinction of holy 
and unholy? Tell me what you call holy and unholy." 

" I," replied Euthyphron, '' call that holy which I am 
now doing: — namely, the denouncing of a wrong-doer 
who commits sacrilege, murder, or other grave offense, 
— no matter whether the offender be father, mother, or 
other relative. It would be unholy to refrain from doing 
so." 

In support of this position, he appeals to the example 
of Zeus, the " best and most just of the gods," who 
chained and mutilated his father, as a punishment for 
his monstrous cruelties. 

Socrates repeats his demand for a definition ; and Eu- 
thyphron answers that the holy is that which pleases the 
gods, the unholy that which displeases them. 

Soc. — " But what rule shall poor mortals have to go 
by when the gods are divided on these questions ? " 

Euth. — " They are never so much divided as not to be 
unanimous in support of the principle that he who com- 
mits an unjustifiable homicide ought to be punished." 

Soc. — " But what is to be done when they are not agreed 
as to the quality of a crime, — whether it was justifiable 
or not? " 

As this is a frequent occurrence in human tribunals, 



no THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Euthyphron is forced to admit that it might also occur 
in the councils of the gods ; and he modifies his defini- 
tion by inserting the word '* all," so as to make an act 
holy or unholy according as it is loved or hated by all 
the gods. Here Socrates pushes him into deeper water 
by asking whether such act is holy because it is loved by 
the gods, or loved because it is holy? 

To this Euthyphron is unable to make any satisfac- 
tory answer; and, after a brief skirmish on other points, 
he drops the discussion. 

Through all its mazes, Socrates had pursued him as 
the Furies pursued Orestes, showing him that the dic- 
tates of nature are the basis of our notions of right and 
wrong; and that, to outrage our best instincts as he is 
doing, is to fight against the gods. Like the Chinese 
philosophers, he teaches that a son is not at liberty to 
assume the attitude of public prosecutor as against a 
parent. 

The prolixity of the Socratic dialogue, of which I 
have given only a brief outline, is in strong contrast with 
the sententiousness of the Confucian school. But, not 
only is the subject of discussion identical ; the name Eu- 
thyphron " straight thinker," is singularly similar to the 
chih jen, or " straight man," of the Chinese. 



yn 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 

A PROFESSOR of Chinese in America is reported 
to have said that '' in the Chinese language there 
is no such thing as a florid style or a beautiful 
style. Style is not taken into consideration. It is in 
writing the language that skill is displayed; and the 
man that executes the characters with dexterity and in- 
genuity is the one that understands the language." 

Though somewhat unexpected as coming from the 
chair of a professor, this opinion is not novel. It ex- 
presses but too truly the estimate in which the literature 
of China has been generally held by the learned world. 

The value of Chinese records is fully conceded. The 
great antiquity of the people; their accurate system of 
chronology; their habit of appealing to history as a tri- 
bunal before which they can arraign their sovereigns; 
and especially their practice of noting as a prodigy every 
strange phenomenon that occurs in any department of 
nature — all conspire to render their annals an inexhausti- 
ble mine of curious and useful information. 

It is in these that our savants may find, extending back 
in unbroken series for thousands of years, notices of 
eclipses, comets, star-showers, aerolites, droughts, floods, 
earthquakes, etc., as well as a comparatively faithful ac- 
count of the rise and fortunes of the most numerous 
branch of the human family. 

But, while admitting that it is worth while to encounter 
all the toil of a diflicult language in order to gain access 

III 



112 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

to such a field of research, who ever dreams that the 
Chinese language contains anything else to repay the 
labor of acquisition ? Who ever imagines that in pursumg 
his favorite game, instead of traversing deserts and 
jungles, he will find himself walking among forests filled 
with the songs of strange birds and perfumed with the 
fragrance of unknown flowers, while ever and anon he is 
ravished by the view of some landscape of surpassing 
beauty ? As soon would the student of literary art expect 
to find the graces of diction among the hieratic inscrip- 
tions of Egypt, or the arrow-headed records of Assyria, 
as to meet them on pages that bristle with the ideographic 
symbols of China. It is with a view to correcting such 
prevalent impressions that this paper is written. In at- 
tempting this, however, I do not propose a disquisition on 
the value of Chinese literature in general, nor commit 
myself to the task of elucidating the principles of its 
rhetoric and grammar; but limit myself rather to the 
single topic of style, and more particularly the style of 
its prose composition. 

This is a subject, which, I am aware, it will not be 
easy to discuss in such a manner as to render it intelligible 
or interesting to those who are unacquainted with the 
Chinese language. Style is a volatile quality, which 
escapes in the process of transfusion ; and illustrations of 
style, however carefully rendered, are at best but as dried 
plants and stufifed animals compared with living nature. 
Chinese, moreover, being from our idiom the most re- 
mote of all languages, suffers most in the process of ren- 
dering. I fear, therefore, that the best versions I may 
be able to offer will only have the effect of confirming 
the impressions which it is my object to combat. That 
such impressions are erroneous ought to be apparent 
from the mere consideration of the antiquity and extent 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 113 

of the Chinese hterature. For, to suppose that a great 
people have been engaged from a time anterior to the 
rise of any other Hving language in building up a litera- 
ture, unequalled in extent, which contains nothing to 
gratify the taste or feed the imagination, is it not to sup- 
pose its authors destitute of the attributes of our common 
humanity? Are we to believe that the bees of China are 
so different from those of other countries that they con- 
struct their curious cells from a mere love of labor, with- 
out ever depositing there the sweets on which they are 
wont to feed? 

It is not always true that external decoration implies 
internal finish or furniture; still, we may assert that it 
would be impossible that the taste which the Chinese dis- 
play in the embellishment of their handwriting and letter- 
press should not find its counterpart in the refinements of 
style. 

They literally worship their letters. When letters were 
invented, they say, heaven rejoiced and hell trembled. 
Not for any consideration will they tread on a piece of 
lettered paper; and to foster this reverence, literary as- 
sociations employ agents to go about the streets, collect 
waste paper, and bum it on a kind of altar with the 
solemnity of a sacrifice. They execute their characters 
with the painter's brush, and rank writing as the very 
highest of the fine arts. They decorate their dwellings 
and the temples of their gods with ornamental inscrip- 
tions ; and exercise their ingenuity in varying both chir- 
ography and orthography in a hundred fantastic ways. 
We may well excuse them for this almost idolatrous ad- 
miration for the greatest gift of their ancestors, for there 
is no other language on earth whose written characters 
approach the Chinese in their adaptation to pictorial effect. 

Yet all this exaggerated attention to the mechanical art 



114 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

of writing is but an index of the ardor with which 
Chinese scholars devote themselves to the graces of com- 
position. 

Their style is as varied as their chirography, and as 
much more elaborate than that of other nations. If they 
spend years in learning to write, where others give a few 
weeks or months to the acquisition of that accomplish- 
ment, it is equally true that, while in other countries the 
student acquires a style of composition almost by acci- 
dent, those of China make it the earnest study of half 
a lifetime. 

While, in the lower examinations, elegance of mechani- 
cal execution, joined to a fair proportion of other merits, 
is sure to achieve success, in competition for the higher 
degrees the essays are copied by official clerks before they 
meet the eye of the examiner; style is everything, and 
handwriting nothing. Even the matter of the essay is of 
little consequence in comparison with the form in which 
it is presented. This is perceived and lamented by the 
more intelligent among the Chinese themselves. They 
often contrast the hollow glitter of the style of the present 
day with the solid simplicity of the ancients ; and de- 
nounce the art of producing the standard wen chang, or 
polished essay, as no less mechanical tlian that of orna- 
mental penmanship. The writer has heard an eminent 
mandarin who himself wielded an elegant pen, speak of 
the stress which the literary tribunals lay on the super- 
ficial amenities of style as a " clever contrivance adopted 
by a former dynasty to prevent the literati from thinking 
too much." * 

Still, however sensible to its defects, Chinese scholars, 
without exception, glory in the extent and high refine- 

* The use of wen chang as an official test is ascribed to Wang 
An Shih of the Sung dynasty, about 1050. 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 115 

ment of their national literature. '* We yield to you the 
palm of science," one of them once said to me, after a 
discussion on their notions of nature and its forces ; but 
he added, *' You, of course, will not deny to us the meed 
of letters." 

The Chinese language is not so ill adapted to purposes 
of rhetorical embellishment as might be inferred from 
its primitive structure. Totally destitute of inflection — its 
substantives without declension, its adjectives without 
comparison, and its verbs without conjugation — it seems 
at first view "' sans everything " that ought to belong to 
a cultivated tongue. Bound, moreover, to a strict order 
of collocation, which its other deficiencies make a neces- 
sity, it would seem to be a clumsy instrument for thought 
and expression. Nor do I deny that it is so in com- 
parison with the leading languages of the West; but it 
is a marvel how fine a polish Chinese scholars have made 
it receive, and what dexterity they acquire in the use of 
it. It possesses, too, some compensating qualities. Its 
monosyllabic form gives it the advantage of concentrated 
energy; and if the value of its words must be fixed by 
their position, like numerals in a column of figures, or 
mandarins on an occasion of state ceremony, it makes 
amends for this inconvenience by admitting each char- 
acter to do duty in all the principal parts of speech. In 
English, we find it to be an element of strength to be 
able to convert many of our nouns into verbs. In Chinese, 
the interchange is all but universal. It is easy to perceive 
how much this circumstance must contribute to variety 
and vigor of expression, as well as to economy of re- 
sources. 

The truculent advice which Han Yu gives as to the 
treatment of the Buddhist priesthood is jen chH jen, lu ch'i 
chii, huo chH shu; literally, man their men, house their 



ii6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

temples, fire their books — an expression of which all but 
the last clause is as unintelligible as the original Chinese. 
To the Chinese reader it means " make laity of their 
priests, make dwelling houses of their sacred places, and 
bum their books." In its native form it is as elegant as 
It is terse and forcible. 

Before all things, a Chinese loves conciseness. This 
taste he has inherited from his forefathers of forty cen- 
turies ago, who, having but a scanty stock of rude em- 
blems, were compelled to practise economy. The com- 
plexity of the characters and the labor of writing con- 
firmed the taste; so that though the pressure of poverty 
is now removed, the scholar of the present day, in re- 
gard to the expenditure of ink, continues to be as parsimo- 
nious"as his ancestors. While we construct our sentences 
so as to guard against the possibility of mistake, he is 
satisfied with giving the reader a clue to his meaning. 
Our style is a ferry-boat that carries the reader over 
without danger or effort on his part ; the Chinese is a 
succession of stepping-stones which test the agility of the 
passenger in leaping from one to another. 

The Chinese writer is not ignorant of the Horatian 
canon, that in " striving after brevity he becomes ob- 
scure ; " but with him obscurity is a less fault than re- 
dundancy. Accordingly, in Chinese, those latent ideas, 
to which a French writer has lately drawn attention, play 
an important part.* In return for a few hints, the reader 

* To say that latent ideas form an essential, often a principal, 
part of human speech is as much a paradox, and yet as true, as to 
affirm that in reading we depend on the absence of light, and 
that the printed letters do not impress the eye. In case of an in- 
scription Ht up by an electric current, the metallic letters, though 
necessary to convey the fluid, remain invisible, and we see only 
the illuminated intervals. The greater the interstices consistent 
with the passage of the spark, the more brilliant the effects. 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 117 

himself supplies all the links that are necessary for the 
continuity of thought. This intense brevity is better 
adapted to a language which is addressed to the eye than 
it would be to one which is expected to be equally in- 
telligible to the ear. Light is quicker than sound. 
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem. 

Next to conciseness, or perhaps in preference to it, the 
Chinese writer is bound to keep in view the law of 
symmetry. He loves a kind of parallelism ; but it is not 
that of the Hebrew poets, whose tautology he abhors. It 
may consist of a simile; but more frequently it merely 
amounts to the expression of correlated ideas in nicely 
corresponding phrases. Every sentence is balanced with 
the utmost precision ; every word has its proper counter- 
poise, and the whole composition moves on with the 
measured tread of a troop of soldiers. 

Dr. Johnson's famous parallel between Pope and Dry- 
den, and the studied antitheses of Lord Macaulay, are 
quite in accordance with the taste of the Chinese. When 
they meet with such a passage in a foreign book, they 
usually exclaim, " This writer knows something of the 
art of composition." And where, in addition to a super- 
fluity of words, they find, as they often do, a neglect of 
this cardinal principle, they do not fail to express their 
disgust. 

A difficulty in rendering the Christian Scriptures is 
that the translator is not at liberty to measure off his 
periods according to the canons of Chinese taste ; and he 
not unfrequently gives unnecessary offence by retaining 
all the circumstances of gender, number, and tense where 
the sense does not require them, and where the genius 
of the Chinese language and the rules of Chinese rhetoric 
alike reject them. In this respect, the earlier transla- 
tions were particularly faulty. Of the more recent ver- 



ii8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

sions, one at least (that of the Delegates) is distinguished 
for classical taste. 

In such a task, the distinction between the Dolmetscher 
and the Uebersetzer which Schleiermacher has so clearly 
drawn should always be kept in view. For, difficult as is 
the task of translating out of a foreign language, that 
of translation into it is still more so ; and still more essen- 
tial is it that the translator be thoroughly imbued with its 
spirit. He must himself be in a manner naturalized, in 
order that his Hterary offspring may enjoy the privileges 
of citizenship. 

The bane of Chinese style is a servile imitation of an- 
tiquity. This not only confines the writer within a nar- 
row circle of threadbare thoughts; it has the effect of 
disfiguring modem literature by spurious ornaments bor- 
rowed from the ancients. The authors of the Thirteen 
Classics are canonized. InfaUible in letters as in doctrine, 
every expression which they have employed becomes a 
model, or rather, I should say, a portion of the current 
vocabulary. But, like the waters of the Ching and Wei, 
the diverse elements refuse to mingle, giving to the most 
admired composition a heterogeneous aspect which mars 
its beauty in our eyes as much as it enhances it in those 
of the Chinese. A premium is thus placed on pedantry, 
and fetters are imposed on the feet of genius. The pecu- 
liar dialect which we sometimes hear from the pulpit, 
made up of fragments of the sacred text skilfully incor- 
porated with the language of every-day life, may serve 
as an illustration of this singular compound. 

In spite of this imitation of antiquity, they are, age 
after age, insensibly drifting away from their standard. 
A law of movement seems to be impressed on all things, 
which even the Chinese are unable to resist. By conse- 
quence, each century in their long history, or, more 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 119 

properly, each dynasty, has formed a style of its own. 
The authors of the Chou, Han, T'ang, and Sung periods 
are broadly discriminated. 

China abounds in literary adventurers of the stamp of 
Constantine Simonides, and the prevalent antiquity-wor- 
ship affords them encouragement ; but happily she has 
her critics too, as acute as Aristarchus of old. 

The great schools of religious philosophy are also 
strongly differentiated in their style of expression. The 
Confucian, dealing with the things of common life, aims 
at perspicuity. The Taoist, occupied with magic and 
mystery, veils his thoughts in symbols and far-fetched 
metaphors. The Buddhist, to the obscurity inseparable 
from the imported metaphysics of India, adds an opaque 
medium by the constant use of Sanscrit phrases which 
are ill understood. Subdivisions of these great schools 
have likewise their peculiarities of style. Of these, how- 
ever, I shall not speak, but hasten to indicate certain 
species of composition, each of which is characterized by 
a style of its own. 

In no country are private correspondence, official des- 
patches, and didactic and narrative writings distinguished 
by more marked peculiarities. 

The style of epistolary intercourse, instead of approach- 
ing, as with us, to that of familiar conversation, is singu- 
larly stiff and affected. Whatever the subject, it is 
ushered in by a formal parade of set phrases, and finished 
off by a conclusion equally stereotyped and unmeaning. 
Form dominates everything in China. It is seldom that 
a letter flows freely from the heart and pen even of an 
able writer; and as for the less educated, though quite 
capable of expressing their own thoughts in their own 
way, they never think of such a thing as throwing off 
the constraint of prescribed forms. It is amusing to see 



120 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

how carefully one who hears of the death of a relative 
culls from a letter-book a form exactly suited to the de- 
gree of his affliction. If the Chinese wrote love-letters 
(which they never do), they would all employ the same 
honeyed phrases; or, like Falstaff in the Merry Wives, 
address the same epistle to all the different objects of 
their admiration. 

By way of sample, here is a " note of congratulation on 
the birthday of a friend." 

'* The Book of History lauds the five kinds of happi- 
ness, and the Book of Odes makes use of the nine similes. 
Both extol the honors of old age. Rejoicing at the anni- 
versary of your advent, I utter the prayer of Hua Feng; 
and, by way of recording my tally in the seaside cot- 
tage, I lay my tribute (the customary gift) at your feet, 
by retaining the whole of which you will shed lustre on 
him who offers it." 

In this short note we have four classic allusions, two 
of which require a word of explanation. The prayer of 
Hua Feng was for the Emperor Yao, that he might be 
blessed with a happy old age and numerous posterity. 
The " tally in the seaside cottage " refers to a legend in 
which one of the immortals says that he does not reckon 
time by years, but whenever sea and land change places, 
he deposits a tally. Those tallies now fill ten cham- 
bers. 

The reply to the foregoing ran as follows: 

" My trifling life has passed away in vanity, unmarked 
by a single trait of excellence. On my birthday especially 
this fills me with shame. How dare I, then, accept your 
congratulatory offerings? I beg to decHne them, and, 
prostrate, pray for indulgence." 

The official correspondence and state-papers of the 
Chinese are, for the most part, dignified, clear, and free 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 121 

from those pedantic allusions with which they love to 
adorn their other writings. Whoever has read, even in 
the form of a translation, the memorials on the opium 
trade laid before the Emperor Tao Kuang, or the papers 
of Commissioner Lin on the same subject, cannot have 
failed to be struck with their manifest ability. Some of 
them are eloquent in style and masterly in argument. 
Imperial edicts are generally well written; but those of 
the Emperor Yung Ching are of such conspicuous merit 
that they are collected in a series of volumes and studied 
as models of composition. 

The didactic style, whether that of commentaries on 
the classic texts or of treatises on science, morals, and 
practical arts, is always formed in accordance with the 
maxim of Confucius, Tze ta erhi, " Enough, if you 
are clear." Such writings are as lucid as the nature of 
the subject, the genius of the language, and the brain of 
the author will admit. The commentaries on the classics 
are admirable specimens of textual exposition. 

The narrative style ranges from the gravity of history 
to the description of scenery and humorous anecdote. Its 
ideal is the combination of the graphic with simplicity. 
Of the historical writings of the Chinese, so far as their 
style is concerned, nothing more can be said than that 
they are simple and perspicuous. Interesting they are 
not; for their bondage to the annal and journal form has 
prevented their giving us comprehensive tableaux; while 
the idea of a philosophy of history has never dawned on 
their minds. In descriptions of scenery the Chinese excel. 
They have an eye for the picturesque in nature; and 
nature throws her varied charms over the pages of their 
literature witli a profusion unknown among the pagan 
nations of the West. Chinese writers are particularly 
fond of relating incidents that are susceptible of a prac- 



122 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tical application. One such is the tiger apologue ascribed 
to Confucius in the preceding chapter. 

Liu Tsung Yuan, of the T'ang period, has a similar 
narrative in which a poisonous reptile takes the place of 
the tiger. A poor man was employed to capture the 
spotted snake for medicinal purposes, and had his taxes 
remitted on condition of supplying the Imperial college 
of physicians with two every year. The author expressing 
his sympathy for his perilous occupation, the man re- 
plied, *' ' My grandfather died in this way, my father 
also, and I, during the twelve years in which I have been 
so engaged, have more than once been near dying by the 
bite of serpents.' As he uttered this with a very sorrow- 
ful expression of countenance, ' Do you wish,' said I. 
* that I should speak to the magistrates and have you 
released from this hard service ? ' His look became more 
sorrowful, and, bursting into tears, he exclaimed, * If you 
pity me, allow me, I pray you, to pursue my present 
occupation; for be assured that my lot, hard as it is, is 
by no means so pitiable as that of those who suffer the 
exactions of tax-gatherers.' " 

I add a specimen, in the same vein, from Liu Chi, a 
writer of the Ming period, who flourished no more than 
five hundred years ago. " I saw," he says, " oranges ex- 
posed on a fruit-stand in midsummer, and sold at a 
fabulous price. They looked fresh and tempting, and I 
bought one. On breaking it open, a puff of something 
like smoke filled my mouth and nose. Turning to the 
seller, I demanded, ^ Why do you sell such fruit ? It is 
fit for nothing but to offer to the gods or to set before 
strangers. What a sham ! What a disgraceful cheat ! ' 
' Well were it,' replied the fruit-seller, * if my oranges 
were the only shams.' And he went on to show how 
we have sham soldiers in the field, sham statesmen in the 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 123 

cabinet, and shams everywhere. I walked away silently, 
musing whether this fruit-seller might not be, after all, 
a philosopher who had taken to selling rotten oranges 
in order to have a text from which to preach on the 
subject of shams." 

The last two pieces, though separated from it by a 
space of from twxlve to sixteen hundred years, are evi- 
dently modelled after the first. I have quoted them to 
show that Chinese writers are not always servile in their 
imitation, or timid in denouncing the corruptions of their 
government. 

Another kind of style is that of the wen chang, or 
polished essay — a brief treatise on any subject, constructed 
according to fixed rules, and limited to seven hundred 
words. In our own literature it answers to short papers 
such as those of the Spectator and Rambler, which were 
so much in vogue in the last century — invariably ushered 
in by a classic motto, and expected to be a model of fine 
writing. 

The production of these is the leading test of literary 
ability. The schoolboy writes wen chang as soon as he 
is able to construe the native classics ; and the gray-haired 
competitor for the doctorate in the examinations at the 
capital is still found writing zven chang. In all the world 
there is no kind of literature produced in equal quantity 
— excepting, perhaps, sermons. Nor is their prodigious 
quantity their only point of resemblance to the produc- 
tions of the Western pulpit. They always have a text 
from the sacred books, which they analyze in a most 
artificial manner, and uniformly reduce to eight heads. 
They aim at nothing beyond exposition, on the principle 
that the moderns can do nothing more than unfold the 
germs of ancient wisdom ; originality is renounced, and, 
as already intimated, their chief adornment consists in 



124 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the artful interweaving of sacred and modern phrase- 
ology. Like the inlaid wares of the Japanese or the 
mosaic pictures of the West, the more numerous and 
minute their borrowed ornaments, the more are these 
compositions admired. Of no practical utility except as a 
mental gymnastic, the style of these essays exerts an in- 
fluence through the whole range of literature. Indeed, 
the term which is commonly employed to cover the whole 
field of belles-lettres is no other than zven chang. 

Here is an opening paragraph of an essay which took 
the first honor in a recent examination for the doctorate : 

Subject — Good-faith and Dignity. *' When we begin, 
we should look to the end. Good-faith and dignity of 
carriage should therefore be objects of our care. By 
faith we mean that our acts should respond to our prom- 
ise; by dignity, that our bearing should be such as to 
repel any approach towards insolent familiarity. This 
is only attained by cherishing a sense of right, cultivating 
a regard for propriety, and at the same time maintaining 
a sympathy for our fellow-men. In this earthly pilgrim- 
age, what we most desire is to escape the blame of being 
untrue. We choose our words with care, for fear we 
should be untrue to our fellows. We choose our actions 
with care, for fear we should be untrue to ourselves. We 
choose our companions with care, lest we should prove 
unfaithful to our friends or they should prove unfaithful 
to us. By so doing we can fulfil our obligations, main- 
tain our dignity of character, and yet preserve inviolate 
our social attachments. Within, we shall have a heart 
that feels its self-imposed engagements as much as if it 
were bound by the stipulations of a solemn covenant; 
while without we shall wear an aspect that will command 
the respect of those who approach us." 

" Enough of such platitudes," one will say, yet no trans- 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 125 

lation can ever do justice to the subtle qualities which 
caused this performance to be crowned among seven 
thousand competitors. The delicate sutures which blend 
its various elements into an harmonious whole must, of 
course, like the wavy lines of a Damascus blade, disap- 
pear when cast into the crucible of the translator. 

From what has been said of the style of schools, periods, 
and different provinces in the empire of letters, it follows 
that, notwithstanding their propensity for imitation, 
Chinese writers must be as strongly individualized as 
those of other countries. If gifted with original genius, 
they form a style of their own; if not, they produce in 
new and undesigned combinations the traits of earlier 
authors by whom they have been most deeply impressed. 

Confucius professed to be an imitator, but he was 
eminently original. Direct, practical, and comprehensive, 
his thoughts are expressed in language at once concise 
and rhythmical — resembling as much as anything else 
those choice lines of Shakespeare which by their com- 
bined felicity of idea and expression have become trans- 
formed into popular proverbs. Whether, like the Hindoo 
guru, he threw them into this form as the text for his 
daily discourse, or whether they were reduced by his 
disciples, it is not in all cases easy to determine. But 
certain it is that, stripped of their attractive dress, what- 
ever their intrinsic merit, they never could have attained 
such universal currency. The teachings of Confucius 
owe as much to style as those of Mahomet. The extent 
to which style was studied in his time we may infer from 
the account he gives us of the manner in which the ele- 
gant state-papers of the principality of Cheng were pro- 
duced. They were the work of four men with long, 
strange names. One " drew out a rough draft," a second 
" sifted the arguments," another " added rhetorical em- 



126 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

bellishments," and the fourth finished them by '' polishing 
off the periods." 

Lao Tse, a senior contemporary of Confucius, left his 
instructions to posterity in " five thousand words," cast 
in a semi-poetical mould. Obscure and paradoxical like 
Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed the Dark (a writer with 
whom it would not be difficult to trace other points of 
analogy besides their common partiality for enigma), 
his dark pages are illumined by many a flash of far-reach- 
ing light. Each of these great masters impressed his 
style on the school which he founded. 

Mencius is Confucius with less dogmatism and more 
vehemence ; while the wild fancy of Chuangtze repro- 
duces the characteristics of Lao Tse in exaggerated pro- 
portions. With both, the current of their diction flows 
like a river, but in each case it wears the complexion of its 
distant source. 

As another example of a contrast in manner, I may 
adduce two historians of the Chou period. Kung Yang 
Kao and Tso Chiu Ming both confine themselves to the 
role of expositors, taking the Confucian annals as their 
text ; but the first often commences with a minute analysis 
of the text, while the other proceeds at once to a narra- 
tive of facts. The former, for instance, thus expounds 
the heading of a chapter: 

Text — '" First year, spring, royal first moon." " Why 
the first year? Because it was the commencement of a 
new reign. Why does he mention spring? Because the 
year began at that season. Why, in speaking of the 
month, does he prefix the word royal ? To indicate that it 
was fixed by the Imperial calendar. Why refer to the 
Imperial calendar? To show that all the states are 
united under one sovereign," etc. 

From Tso Chiu Ming I cite a passage which, whether 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 127 

it do or do not exhibit any other peculiarity, will at least 
show the absence of interrogation marks. 

Text — " The Prince of Cheng conquers Tiian at Yen'* 
Premising that the belligerents were brothers; that their 
mother had abetted the rebellion of Tuan the younger; 
and that the Prince, pronouncing against her a sentence 
of banishment, had taken a solemn oath never to see her 
again until they should both be under the ground, the 
historian continues, " The Prince soon repented of his 
hasty oath. The Governor of Ying Ku heard it, and came 
with a present. The Prince detained him to dine. Ying 
Ku put aside a portion of the meats. The Prince inquired 
the reason. Said Ying Ku, ' They are for my mother, 
who has never tasted such royal dainties.' ' You have a 
mother, then,' said the Prince ; ' alas ! I have none/ He 
then told him of his oath, at the same time informing him 
of his repentance. 

" ' Why need your Majesty be troubled on that ac- 
count? ' exclaimed Ying Ku. ' If you will only make a 
subterranean chamber with two doors, and meet there, 
who will say that you have not kept your oath ? ' 

" The Prince took the counsel, and, meeting his mother 
beneath the ground, they became mother and son as be- 
fore. How perfect the piety of Ying Ku, who devised 
this plan ! " 

The great masters of style are a thousand years later 
than these last ; and then we find philosophers, poets, and 
historians in such constellations as to make the dynasties 
of T'ang and Sung a Golden Age for Chinese letters. 
Then flourished such writers as Han Yu, surnamed the 
Prince of Literature ; Li Pei, in whom the planet Venus 
was believed to be incarnate ; the three Su, father and 
sons ; and a host of others whose light has not yet reached 
our Western shores, and whose names it would be tedious 



128 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

to recount. Their names, musical enough in the tones 
of their native land, are harsh to Occidental ears. What 
a pity they have not all been clothed in graceful Latin, 
like those of Confucius and Mencius ! These sages, if 
they owe to their style in a great degree their popularity 
at home, are almost equally indebted for their fame 
abroad to the classical terminations of their names. 
Name is fame in more than one sense, and more than one 
language — in Chinese as in Hebrew; and it is obvious 
that in the Western world no amount of merit would be 
sufficient to confer celebrity on a man bearing the name 
of K'oong Footzel 

I refrain from further extracts. For reasons already 
given, no translation can do justice to the style of a 
Chinese writer; and a volume, instead of a brief essay, 
would be required to give an approximate idea of the 
other qualities of what the Chinese describe as their 
elegant literature. 

It is on their poetry that they especially pique them- 
selves; but, as I think, with mistaken judgment. For 
while their prose-writers, like those of France, are un- 
surpassed in felicity of style, their poetry, like that of 
France, is stiff and constrained. Like their own women, 
their poetical muses have cramped feet and no wings. 

For variety in prose composition, the nature of the lan- 
guage affords a boundless scope. For, not to speak of 
local dialects, the language of scholars, or the written 
language, ranges in its choice of expressions from the 
familiar patois up to the most archaic forms. In China 
nothing becomes obsolete; and a writer is thus enabled 
to pitch his composition, at option, on a high or low key, 
and to carry it through consistently. There are, for ex- 
ample, three sets of personal pronouns that correspond 
to as many grades of style; while there are other styles 



CHINESE PROSE COMPOSITION 129 

in which the personal pronoun is dispensed with, and 
substantives employed instead. 

Founded on pictorial representation, the language is, in 
many of its features, highly poetical, the strange beauties 
with which it charms the fancy at every step, suggesting 
a ramble among the gardens of the sea-nymphs. Nor is 
it a dead language, though in its written form no longer 
generally spoken. It contains " thoughts that breathe, 
and words that burn," — writers whom the student will 
gladly acknowledge as worthy compeers of the most ad- 
mired authors of the ancient West. I say *' ancient," for 
China is essentially ancient. She is not yet modernized, 
and finds fitter parallels in pagan antiquity than in modern 
Christendom. 

The time, I trust, is not far distant when her language 
will find a place in all our principal seats of learning, and 
when her classic writers will be known and appreciated. 



VIII 

CHINESE LETTER WRITING 

IN no Other language is the style of private corre- 
spondence so widely separated from that of official 
or public documents as in the Chinese. The latter, 
simple and direct in expression, eschews ornament, and 
aims chiefly at clearness and force; the former, artificial 
to the last degree, teems with trite allusions which are 
rather pedantic than elegant. 

With us, in this as in so many other things, the reverse 
is not far from the truth. It is the official despatch that 
is cast in iron moulds ; and the familiar letter is left free 
to take any shape the easy play of thought and feeling 
may impress upon it. Western authors accordingly 
sometimes choose to throw their compositions into the 
convenient form of epistles when they wish to invest 
them with the double charm of clearness and vivacity. 
By employing the form of letters, Pascal imparted to 
polemic discussion the grace and humor of the comic 
drama; while Swift and Junius availed themselves of the 
same weapon in their terrible attacks on the government. 
Not so the Chinese: though necessity leads to the dis- 
cussion of grave topics in the form of letters, and though 
the teachings of some of their ancient philosophers were 
communicated in the way of correspondence, no modern 
Chinese ever thinks of throwing his ideas into such a 
shape, any more than he would treat a grave subject under 
the form of the modern prize essay. Thoughtful men 
denounce the regulation essay as utterly useless ; but they 

130 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 131 

never denounce the conventional style of letter-writing, 
though both have a family likeness. The reason is that 
the letter of friendship or business is a social necessity, 
and the Hterary ornament with which it is tricked out is 
deemed essential to save it from vulgarity. 

In friendly correspondence the opening paragraphs are 
always consecrated to the expression of high-flown senti- 
ments, real or assumed, and not unfrequently the falsetto 
pitch of the exordium is painfully sustained to the very 
close. Nothing is more offensive to our taste, or less cal- 
culated to encourage the labor of acquisition. If a letter 
contains any serious business, the foreign reader, if he 
does not, as in most cases, rely on a native teacher for 
explanation, finds that he can arrive at it by a process of 
elimination, i. e. by leaving out of account all the unin- 
telligible rhetoric. But this is not merely unscholarly; it 
limits the use of correspondence, and shuts out the stu- 
dent (he does not deserve the name of student if willing 
to be shut out) from a department of literature which 
more than any other presents us with pictures of indi- 
vidual character and social life. 

The student who desires to enter this field will find 
numerous private collections of more or less celebrity 
soliciting his attention. If any of them were from the 
pens of gifted women ; and if the canons of Chinese taste 
(for the fault is not in the language) permitted them, 
like their sisters of the West, to write as they talk, he 
might, even in this department, verify the quaint old 
maxim, '' The sweetness of the lips increaseth knowl- 
edge." But, alas ! there is no Sevigne, who, by her bril- 
liant gossip, can shed the dews of immortality, over the 
ephemeral intrigues of a court, and by her wit give a 
value to things that are worthless, as amber does to the 
insects which it embalms ; there is no Wortley, who chats 



132 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

with equal charm of Hterature and love; no Lady Duff 
Gordon, who, by her genius and enterprise, puts us in 
love with boat life and Bedouins. 

The paths of epistolary literature, where the choicest 
flowers are dropped from female hands, are in China 
almost untrodden by female feet; and a reason gravely 
given for withholding from women the key of knowledge 
is that men are afraid they will learn to write letters. It 
is not nature, but man, that is ungenerous to the daughters 
of the East. 

" Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; 
Chill jealousy repressed their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul." 

Nor, it must be confessed, is there any such indemnity In 
store for our student as the epistles of a moralizing 
Seneca ; or the correspondence of a malignant and intrigu- 
ing Walpole, which lifts the veil from the mysteries 
of contemporary politics, and from the writer's own 
bosom, so that Macaulay ingeniously compares the flavor 
of the letters of the great minister to that of pates de foie 
gras, because derived from a disease of the liver in the 
animal that produced them. But as some of our most 
eminent poets, such as Dryden, Gray, and Cowper, have 
left behind them letters that are preserved as models of 
elegance, in which fancy and feeling are no less happily 
blended than in their poetical works, so we find that in 
China the list of distinguished letter writers is headed by 
the names of poets, showing that they enjoyed the favor 
of the miisa pedestris as well as of her winged sisters. 

The earliest collection of letters, or at least the most 
famous of those that are accepted as models of epistolary 
style, came from the pens of two celebrated poets of the 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 133 

Sung dynasty, Su Tung P'o, and Huang T'ing Chien. 
Under the joint name of Su Huang Ch'ih Tu, though not 
properly a Bricfwechsel, or correspondence between the 
two authors, it has ever since the battle of Hastings 
given law to this species of composition. 

The stream of time, like that which floated the bor- 
rowed axe of the prophet, usually carries down the 
weightier matters, and deposits the less important as sedi- 
ment; yet in this instance we have reason to regret that, 
like natural rivers, it has only brought down to us the 
lighter material on its surface. Both writers held high 
offices, and one of them was especially honored at the 
Imperial Court; but their letters have little to do with 
State policy; and the selection has obviously been made 
on the principle that if one of their merits is in the ele- 
gance of their form, another ought to be in the absence of 
facts. Still, even these shining husks, if carefully sifted, 
will be found to yield some grains of valuable informa- 
tion. 

A book of letters of more modern date, and scarcely 
inferior in reputation, is the Ch'ih Tu of Hsiao Ts'ang, or 
Sui Yuan, as it is variously styled. The author. Yuan 
Mei, a native of Che kiang, won a seat in the Imperial 
Academy in the reign of Ch'ien Lung; and declining 
office, passed his life at Nanking, chiefly engaged in 
scholastic pursuits, boasting that for thirty years he never 
appeared at court. 

Known mainly as a professor of belles-lettres, with 
pupils dispersed over several provinces, instead of col- 
lected into one lecture room, and communicating by post 
instead of viva voce, this worthy man has not merely left 
models of composition, but set an example, both as scholar 
and instructor, which is much admired though little fol- 
lowed. 



134 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

A poet of refined taste, and not without talent, it is 
interesting to know that he gave instruction in the art of 
poetry to numerous ladies of high family and culture, 
making, from time to time, the circuit of the cities where 
they resided — a fact the rarity of which rather supports 
than invalidates the view above given of the deficiencies 
of female education. 

There are numerous works passing under the general 
name of CJrih Tu, which were prepared expressly for 
form-books, and will repay perusal for that purpose. Of 
these I may mention the Yen chi mu tan, Hai shang hung 
ni, and Liu ch'ing chi; but they have not the additional 
recommendation of a history. 

It is, however, with a view to drawing attention to a 
more recent collection that this article is written. 

The Tze Yuan Ch'ih Tu, published at Peking a few 
years ago in four thin volumes, consists of a selection 
from the letters of Liu Chia Chu. 

This is a name which, being unknown, carries no 
weight; and our author, like Hawthorne in one of his 
earlier works, might speak of himself as enjoying the 
distinction of being one of the obscurest men of letters 
in all China. A native of Hunan, he passed many years 
in the office of the Governor of Canton ; a representative 
of that nameless but influential class who transact the 
business while their superiors enjoy the honors of official 
station. 

During this period he wrote, he tells us, heaps of papers 
higher than his head, among which one might play hide- 
and-seek in more senses than one. Most of them were, 
of course, sent forth in the name of others, and the writer 
facetiously compares himself with a milliner who prepares 
the clothing for a bride, or a go-between who arranges 
for her nuptials. Of these he gives us none, unless, in- 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 135 

<ieed, by surreptitiously changing their address and adapt- 
ing them to his own use. 

The most of his papers bear unmistakable marks of 
having been culled from his private portfolio; affording 
such incidental glimpses of life and manners that one is 
compelled to accept them as a genuine record — a portion 
of the writer's autobiography. This gives the work an 
element of interest of no mean order, and a value of its 
own, as a mirror held up to the face of Chinese life by 
the hand of a native. So frank, indeed, are its disclosures, 
so little care is taken to draw a veil over things that are 
deemed discreditable, that one might almost regard the 
work as belonging to the category of " confessions " — 
originated by St. Augustine, and rendered popular by 
Rousseau. 

As to the literary merits of the performance, it is suf- 
ficient to cite the names of the two sponsors under whose 
patronage the author comes before the public — Kuo 
Sung Tao, Minister to England, and Wang K'ai Tai, the 
late enlightened governor of the Province of Fukien — 
each of them having filled the post of Governor of Can- 
ton, and employed Liu Chia Chu as a confidential secre- 
tary. 

Other great names are invoked in a long list of lauda- 
tory notices ; and some that we meet with incidentally in 
the course of the correspondence, such as Tseng Kuo 
Fan, Chiang I Li, Li Hung Chang, and Liu Ch'ang Yu, 
(viceroy of Yiinnan and Kweichou), impart to it an air 
of historical truth that is much in its favor. 

Without pausing longer to discourse about the book, 
let us open its pages and see what we shall find there. 

To begin, we shall find a meteoric shower of allusions. 
This is the most prominent characteristic of this species 
of writing; and the primary object of the artifice is to 



136 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

hide the nakedness of commonplace. Employed in excess 
or handled clumsily, it aggravates the evil by exposing the 
poverty of the writer, or substitutes the graver faults of 
pedantry and cant; used with skill and taste, it throws 
over the page a glitter of iridescent hues, or, it may be, 
contributes largely to the significance and force of lan- 
guage. 

These allusions are of various kinds. Some suggest 
whole chapters of history ; others bring up the words or 
actions of real or mythical personages ; while others still, 
by a single word or phrase, cast a beam of light on some 
poetical tableau, which brings its entire effect to bear on 
the subject in hand. For instance, when Dryden says of 
Thais that, 

" Like another Helen, she fired another Troy," 

what a crowd of teeming associations he condenses into 
the space of a single line! How much is expressed by 
such brief phrases as " a Barmecide feast," " a Bellerophon 
letter," " a Judas kiss ! " 

The Chinese language abounds in such ; and no one 
can be said to understand the language who is not in some 
degree familiar with them. Then there are curt allusions 
of a purely literary kind — catch words which suggest any 
one of the three hundred classic odes, or refer to thou- 
sands of well-known passages in later literature. To these 
we may add a vocabulary of metaphorical words and 
phrases, the use of which is de rigeur in a certain style 
which makes it a point of taste not to call things by their 
right names. Thus the poet or the elegant letter-writer 
never speaks of copper cash, but calls them " green 
beetles ; " a sheet of paper he calls " a flowery scroll ; " 
an epistle is " a wild goose." Husband and wife are 
Ch'ang-sui, " tenor and treble ; " K'ang-li, " strength and 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 137 

beauty ; " Yuan-yang, " duck and drake ; " and a hundred 
other pretty things, at the poet's option. A man is a 
prince and his wife a princess ; his house a palace and his 
children a phoenix brood. To repay the kindness of par- 
ents is to emulate the stork ; to return a borrowed article 
is to restore the gem ; a man of genius employed in a work 
of drudgery — as Charles Lamb in the India Office — is 
" a race-horse in a salt-wagon." 

These are but a few specimens of a sort of dialect that 
has its own dictionaries without number or limit; and 
of which every reader of Chinese is under the necessity 
of knowing something, if he does not master it. Per- 
haps the best key to it for any student, native or foreign, 
is a collection of wen chang, or of well-written letters, 
such as those of our obscure friend Liu Chia Chu. In dic- 
tionaries and cyclopaedias, or in such a useful hand-book 
as Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, he will find gems 
arranged as in a mineralogical cabinet ; but in these com- 
positions he meets them in their proper setting. The 
object of such works is to aid, not to supersede, the 
reading of difficult authors — as a certain learned Dutch- 
man proposed to supersede Homer by presenting the 
Homeric archaeology in a tabulated form. 

We now proceed to the substratum of facts underly- 
ing the gold and tinsel of which we have been speaking. 
Of little importance in themselves, and not by any means 
thick-sown through these pages, they are still not devoid 
of interest as illustrations of character, personal and na- 
tional. 

It was from the letters of Cicero that Mr. Middleton 
drew the principal materials for his admirable life of the 
great Roman statesman. But the letters of Chu Futze 
or Su Tung P'o would furnish scanty materials for a 
history of their lives; and meagre indeed are the out- 



138 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

lines of biography which we are able to extract from 
the sentimental effusions of Liu Chia Chu. 

Our author first drew his breath, and with it what 
poetic inspiration he possessed, amidst the mountain 
scenery of Southern Hunan, about the middle of the 
reign of Chia Ching (circa 1810). Bom in a rustic vil- 
lage not far from the city of Hsin Hua, he came of a 
family distinguished for scholarship — a fact of which he 
never ceases to remind the reader; and there can be no 
doubt that he inherited talent, though his patrimony in- 
cluded little else. 

Boasting somewhat of his early precocity, he hints at 
youthful dissipations as having proved fatal to his career 
as a scholar, and planted the seeds of unending regrets. 
He failed — probably from a defective chirography, as 
many a worthier man has done — to win the first or lowest 
degree in the civil-service examinations; and about the 
age of thirty he removed with his family to Can- 
ton, forgetting, it seems, to liquidate certain debts of 
honor. 

Concerned in the conduct of a charity-school, Liu, 
thinking that charity ought to begin at home, *' borrowed " 
a portion of the funds to meet his own necessities. Ar- 
rived at Canton, he learned with much regret that the 
slight liberty he had taken with its capital was likely to 
occasion the dissolution of the school. Against this he 
protests with much eloquence ; but has nothing more sub- 
stantial to encourage the good work than " promises to 
pay." In this connection his reference to himself, as a 
good example of the benefits of education, is, to say the 
least, a little naive. 

After this, we are not surprised to find many epistles 
filled with complaints of poverty. He has work enough, 
but scant remuneration. Great men admire his genius, 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 139 

and load him with compliments; but, like virtue, which 
he does not much resemble in any other respect, laudatur 
et alget. 

From one friend he begs the loan of a " few hundred 
pieces of gold," from another he borrows a suit of decent 
apparel. Good models these letters for one who has 
much to do in the line of begging or borrowing! 

All this time Liu's family is increasing at a rather 
alarming rate ; not that he has any children born, but from 
time to time he takes a new beauty into his harem in 
the hope that children will follow. One is presented to 
him by a friend; another, not unnaturally, runs away, 
or, as he euphemistically terms it, *' carries her guitar 
to another door." 

A correspondent of comparatively severe morals ex- 
postulates with Liu on this seeming abandonment to a Hfe 
of sensuality. The latter replies by drawing an affecting 
picture of an aged father who cannot die in peace with- 
out the joy of embracing a grandson ! 

At length his hopes are awakened only to meet with 
disappointment — one of his wives presenting him with a 
daughter. The little creature appears not to be alto- 
gether unwelcome, and, in fact, makes for herself a 
warm place in her father's heart; though he frequently 
alludes to her in uncomplimentary terms borrowed from 
the classic odes : 

" A girl is born ; in coarse cloth wound, 
With a tile for a toy, let her lie on the ground," etc. 

The spell broken, another of his ladies crowns his desires 
by giving him a son, whose advent is duly hailed by a 
flourish of trumpets, and further quotations from the 
Book of Odes : 



140 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

*' A son is born ; on an ivory bed, 
Wrap him in raiment of purple and red ; 
Gold and jewels for playthings bring 
To the noble boy who shall serve the king." 

In a few months this child of many hopes sickens and 
dies. The disconsolate father mourns deeply, and fills 
many sheets with melodious tristia. 

About this time the doors of official preferment, be- 
fore which he had been so long waiting (having failed 
to find the key in his earlier youth), began slowly to open 
before him. Appointed magistrate of a sub-district in the 
country, called Lo Kang, he contrived to send some one 
to act in his stead (subletting the profits of the position), 
while he remained at the provincial capital in the midst 
of the literary society which he loved so dearly. 

Appointed to Kowloon, on the mainland opposite to 
Hongkong, Liu again finds excuses for not repairing to 
his post; and the governor, offended by his tardiness, 
cancels the appointment. After due penance, he is re- 
stored to favor and offered another post, such as Caesar 
himself would have preferred to being the second man at 
Rome. Taught by experience, he lost no time in installing 
himself in his new yamen. Its roof leaks, its walls are 
crumbling, and all its apartments filled with rubbish ; but, 
to compensate for all this, it contains a throne, which, if 
he had read Milton, he might have compared with that of 
the ** anarch old " who ruled the realms of chaos. 

Here he finds a new order of talents called into requi- 
sition : he has to deal with facts instead of words, and 
is evidently proud of the success with which he per- 
forms the functions of a judge — ^favoring us with one 
of his judgments as a model of its kind. It betrays, how- 
ever, the fact that his right hand has not forgotten its 
cunning; that he continues to be a rhetorician in spite 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 141 

of himself, and is more at home in reading a lecture than 
in pronouncing a sentence. 

Unique among the rose-water productions of his epis- 
tolary pen, his report of this lawsuit reminds us that 
Liu has also given us a few specimens of another species 
of composition. In the course of his career he is some- 
times assistant examiner, and sometimes appears in the 
character of a competitor; not, indeed, in the ordinary 
examinations, but in those special trials which expectant 
officers are required to pass at the provincial capital. On 
one of these occasions Liu's essays were endorsed by 
the high authorities in terms which placed them on a 
level with the best productions of the classic ages. 

These eulogies he not only repeats in many of his 
letters, but favors his friends with copies of the fortunate 
papers, that they may judge for themselves whether the 
praise is merited; pleasing himself with the reflection 
that but for the injustice of the lower courts he might long 
since have worn the highest honors of the literary arena. 

Liu's literary ability is duly recognized by a host of 
junior aspirants, who solicit copies of his essays, send 
presents on his fete-days, and institute theatricals in his 
honor. His moral character is more doubtful. A polyg- 
amist on principle, he disclaims the virtues of an ascetic 
philosopher in order to emulate the libertinism of certain 
dissolute poets. Had he, indeed, done nothing worse than 
fill his own cage with bright-winged songsters, he would 
have been walking too closely in the footsteps of saints 
and sages to attract attention. To vindicate for himself 
the reputation of being a free spirit — one that spurns 
what he denominates the '' minor morals " — he mingles 
occasionally with the " soiled doves." 

For this, his best apology is that the silly occupants of 
his own dove-cot are incapable of appreciating his genius ; 



142 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

while some of these unappropriated ones, Hke the hetserae 
of Greece, had their charms enhanced by the advantages 
of education. He gives us a letter which he wrote to 
one of this class, with hypocritical morality recommend- 
ing her to take refuge in a house of religion. 

In an epistle to another friend, he gives us reason to 
suspect that even the vestals of Buddha were not sacred 
in his eyes; and that with him sacrilege was necessary 
to give the highest flavor to license. Freely unfolding his 
inner life, and trenching often on forbidden ground, it is 
something in his favor that he is always elegant and never 
indecent. 

After this account of his morals, it would be useless to 
inquire for his reHgion. He says, indeed, very little on 
the subject. He alludes to a " Creator " more than once, 
but in language of studied levity, showing that to him 
the author of nature is not a '* living God.*' 

As to outward observances, he conforms to popular 
usage ; he believes in fate, and, impatient to know its de- 
crees, applies to a professional fortune-teller; in all these 
points only too true a type of the average literati of his 
country. 

The boundary-line between friendly and official corre- 
spondence is not easy to trace. It is to the former that 
we confine ourselves in the present communication; but 
it will not be amiss to remark that much of the best 
writing in the Chinese language may be found on inter- 
mediate ground between formal business documents and 
friendly letters. 

In this class of compositions, vaguely described as 
official letters, the grace of the polished epistle is often 
added to the directness and force of the despatch style — 
a happy combination, of which some of the best speci- 
mens may be seen in the published correspondence of 



CHINESE LETTER WRITING 143 

Hu Lin-Yeh, canonized under the title of Hu Wen Cheng 
Kung ; and in that of Ch'en Wen Chung Kung, who, hav- 
ing won three times in succession the first literary honor 
of his province and of the Empire, received from that 
circumstance the sobriquet of Ch'en San Yuan, ** CR'en 
the Triple First." 



IX 

CHINESE FABLES 

THE Student of Chinese inquires in vain for any 
collection of native fables; and he feels their 
absence as a personal inconvenience when he 
recalls his obligations to yEsop and Phaedrus, Lessing and 
La Fontaine, for alleviating the toil of his earlier studies 
in the classic languages of ancient and modem Europe. 
This deficiency is the more disappointing, as the constant 
occurrence of the words pi fang in our colloquial exercises 
leads us to expect to find the fields of literature thick- 
sown with every variety of similitude. Parables and alle- 
gories are, indeed, not wanting, but their congener, the 
fable, seems never to have existed, or in some mysterious 
way to have become well-nigh extinct. 

Nor is this last supposition a mere fancy. We turn 
up from time to time what seem to be fossil fragments 
enough to give it, to say the least, as good a foundation 
as some scientific theories have to rest on. For what 
are those numerous proverbial expressions drawn from 
the habits of animals but the ghosts, or rather the skele- 
tons, of vanished fables. But whether such originals 
ever existed, certain it is that nothing is more easy or 
natural than to expand these phrases into the full di- 
mensions of the proper apologue. 

Take, for instance, " the sheep in a tiger's skin," " when 
the hare dies the fox weeps," " he who nurses a tiger's 
cub will rue his kindness," etc. Do not these seem to 
point back to ancient fables as their source; just as we 

144 



CHINESE FABLES 145 

know " the fox and the grapes," " the ass in a lion's 
skin," and other proverbial expressions current among us 
were derived from fables ? 

But how did such originals, supposing them to have 
existed, come to be lost? We reply, they were either 
never reduced to writing, or not written in a style adapted 
to the taste of the country. For ages past the Chinese 
have affected an extreme sententiousness in the style of 
their literary composition. This would naturally lead 
them to extract the living spirit and to reject the cum- 
brous form of such fables as might spring up in the 
humbler walks of their folk-lore. Thus they may have 
had their unknown Pilpays and their mute, inglorious 
yEsops. 

At all events, the defect of which we are speaking 
was not occasioned, as some would have us infer, by a 
want of imagination. For Chinese literature, while it 
contains nothing that rises to the dignity of the epic 
muse, yet teems with the productions of a fertile fancy — 
metamorphoses as numerous (if not as elegant) as those 
of Ovid ; fairy tales more monstrous than Grimm's ; and 
narratives of adventure (generally accepted as sober his- 
tory) as strange as those of Sindbad or Gulliver. It is, 
we repeat, a question of taste rather than talent ; and this, 
we think, is borne out by the reception which the Chinese 
gave to Mr. Thom's excellent translation of ^sop, a 
work which, instead of finding its way into every house- 
hold, is rarely to be met with even in the stalls of a book- 
seller. The mandarins suspected that wolves and bears 
were masks for dangerous doctrines and biting satire; 
while neither prince nor peasant has cared enough about 
the production to keep it alive. 

As to talent, while we will not assert that the Chinese 
could have excelled in this department of literature, there 



146 THE LORE OF. CATHAY 

is proof, we think, that they are not wholly destitute of 
a capacity for it. This will be found in the following 
fables, derived from various sources, which we give by 
way of specimen, hoping that readers of Chinese will add 
to the number any that happen to come under their 
notice : 

1. The King of Chu inquiring with some surprise why 
the people of the North were so frightened at the ap- 
proach of Chou Hsi Hsu, one of his ministers replied as 
follows : " A tiger who happened to be preceded by a 
fox was greatly astonished to see all the animals running 
away from the fox, little suspecting that their terror was 
inspired by himself. It is not Chou, but your Majesty, of 
whom the people of the North are in dread." 

2. " I may go out and play without any danger now," 
said a little mouse to its mother. " The old cat has be- 
come religious ; I see her with her eyes shut, engaged in 
praying to Buddha." 

Grimalkin's devotions, however, did not prevent her 
seizing the silly little creature as soon as it ventured 
near. 

3. A tiger who had never seen an ass was terrified at 
the sound of his voice, and was about to run away, when 
the latter turned his heels and prepared to kick. 

^* If that is your mode of attack," said the tiger, " I 
know how to deal with you." 

4. A tiger having clapped his paw on an unlucky 
monkey, the latter begged to be released on the score of 
his insignificance, and promised to show the tiger where 
he might find a more valuable prey. The tiger complied, 
and the monkey conducted him to a hill-side where an 
ass was feeding — an animal which the tiger, till then, 
had never seen. 

" My good brother," said the ass to the monkey, 



CHINESE FABLES 147 

" hitherto you have always brought me two tigers, how 
is it that you have only brought me one to-day ? " 

Hearing these words, the tiger fled for his Hfe. Thus 
a ready wit may often ward off great dangers. 

5. A tiger, finding a cat very proHfic in devices for 
catching game, placed himself under her instruction. At 
length he was told there was nothing more to be learned. 
"Have you, then, taught me all your tricks?" he in- 
quired. " Yes," replied the cat. *' Then," said the tiger, 
** you are of no further use, and so I shall eat you," The 
cat, however, sprang lightly into the branches of a tree, 
and smiled at his disappointment. She had not taught 
him all her tricks. 

The Chinese apply this to their foreign instructors 
in the art of war, and evidently suspect that some master 
secret is always held in reserve. 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 

THE word " tract," in its more general sense, signi- 
fies a treatise on any subject. In the special 
sense, which the activity of our Tract Societies 
has brought into use, it means a small book in which the 
sanctions of religion are brought forward in support of 
morality. Its aim is to enlighten the human mind, and 
to purify the widening stream of human life. 

That the people of that ancient empire, who have an- 
ticipated us in so many discoveries, and in every kind 
of social experiment, should have gone before us in the 
creation of a tract-literature, is not surprising. In China, 
as in other countries, one of the earliest uses of written 
speech was to extend the influence of good men, by 
causing their words to reach a wider circle, beyond the 
bounds of personal intercourse, which in space is limited 
to a few miles, and in time to a few years. 

For the same reasons, one of the first applications of 
the art of printing, in which China was six hundred years 
in advance of Europe, was to multiply tracts; and the 
aggregate mass of its publications in this department 
has, in the course of ten centuries, attained an enormous 
development. To enumerate even the most popular of 
them would necessitate the recitation of a long catalogue ; 
and to offer an outline criticism of each would be an 
endless task. They fall, however, into certain well-de- 
fined categories, such as: — 

I. — Those which inculcate morality in general. 

148 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 149 

2. — Those which persuade to the practice of particular 
virtues. 

3. — Those which seek to deter from particular vices. 

4. — Those that are written in the interest of particular 
religions or divinities. 



One or two in each class, as types of the whole will be 
sufficient to exhibit their character and scope. 

In the first class, a leading place might properly be 
assigned to the discourses of Confucius and Mencius, 
and to numerous treatises of later philosophers; but, as 
we are accustomed to make a distinction between scrip- 
tures and tracts, these, or at least those first mentioned, 
are to be regarded as the sacred scriptures of the Chinese. 

With us, many tracts consist almost entirely of Scrip- 
ture passages, selected and arranged. In the native 
literature of the Chinese, similar tracts based on their 
best books may be found in great numbers. 

One such is called the Ming Hsin Pao Chien, — Mirror 
of the Heart. It contains a choice collection of the best 
sayings of the best men that country has produced. 
Those sayings are gems, neatly cut, highly poHshed, and 
sparkling with the light of truth. In other tracts they 
may be differently arranged; but everywhere they shine 
with the mild radiance of wisdom and virtue. 

A collection of this kind, called Ming Hsien Chi, — Say- 
ings of the Wise, is a great favorite in Peking. It differs 
from the tract last named in drawing its wise saws chiefly 
from modern sources. It opens with the noble maxim: 
— " Only practice good works, and ask no questions about 
your future destiny." The first chapter ends with the 
encouraging assurance : — " Human desires can be broken 
off; Heaven's laws can be observed." 



ISO THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Another maxim gives the general tenor of its teach- 
ings : — *' All things bow to real worth ; happiness is stored 
up by honesty." Every sentence is a proverb; and 
though, like the Hebrew proverbs, there are many that 
inculcate thrift and worldly wisdom, there are not a few 
that rise to a higher level. Its religion is unhappily of a 
very colorless description, — contrasting strongly with 
the doctrine of direct responsibility to a living God, which 
pervades the proverbs of the Jews, — making their religion 
the most practical of their concerns. The idea of direct 
responsibility is not indeed altogether wanting, though 
in this class of tracts it is not sufficiently insisted on. 
In this, and in nearly all similar collections, we find the 
warning that — 

" The gods behold an evil thought, 
As clearly as a flash of Hghtning ; 
And whispers uttered in a secret place, 
To them sound loud as thunder." 

The Family Monitor of Chu Po Lu so well known, sets 
forth an admirable system of precepts for the ordering of 
a household, in which children are brought up with 
judicious severity, and servants treated with considerate 
tenderness, — purity and honor being vital elements of the 
domestic atmosphere. 

The Ti Tze Knei, or Guide to the Young, though less 
known, is a book of a higher order. Composed almost 
in our own times, in imitation of the far-famed Trimetri- 
cal Classic, it surpasses its model, and shows, if we may 
judge by words alone, that the line of sages is not yet ex- 
tinct. In the second chapter, entitled Truth and Virtue, 
we find a doctrine too rarely taught in Chinese books : — 



' In every word you utter, 
Let truth be first ; 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 151 

Deceit and falsehood, 
How can you endure! 

Do not lightly speak 

Of what you do not certainly know; 

Things not right, 

Do not lightly promise ; 

If you do promise, 

Whether you go forward or go back, 

You are equally in fault." 

Here is a neat definition: — 

" To do wrong without intention 
Is an error; 

To do wrong with purpose 
Is a crime." 

The author adds: — 

'* Your errors, if you correct them. 
End in no error; 
If you hide or cloak them, 
You add one sin more." 

The Sacred Edict, containing the maxims of Kang Hsi 
amplified by Yung Cheng, is not too large to be classed 
with tracts. Each chapter may, indeed, be regarded as a 
tract on a special subject. Nothing gives a better view 
of the kind of morals inculcated by the head of the gov- 
ernment — morals which harmonize in a wonderful man- 
ner with some of the teachings of Christianity. 

The tracts that I have mentioned emanate from the 
school of pure Confucianism. They are not irreligious, 
for they everywhere admit the supremacy of a vague 
power called Heaven. They admit, further, that that 
power, whatever it may be, is not indifferent to human 
conduct. 



152 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Does not the venerable Book of Changes, the most 
ancient of the canonical writings, expressly declare that — 

" On those who store up righteousness, 
Heaven sends down a hundred blessings; 
And on those who store up ill-desert, 
Heaven sends down a hundred woes." 

This sentence re-appears in all these tracts; and the 
doctrine of a providential retribution, unfailing for the 
good, unrelenting for the evil, is affirmed, amplified, and 
illustrated, as a cardinal truth which no man can doubt. 
By this school it is taught, as it was by the Sadducees of 
Judea, without reference to hopes or fears connected with 
a belief in a life to come. The certainty of prosperity in 
this world as the reward of virtue, and of shame and 
suffering as the penalty of vice, is the motive most con- 
stantly appealed to, though it should not be forgotten 
that, in a passage already quoted, a sublimer conception 
is set forth : — *' Only do good, and ask no questions as to 
your future destiny," — assuring us that some among the 
moralists of the pure Confucian school might unite with 
us in the petition of Pope's Universal Prayer — 

" What conscience tells me should be done, 
Or warns me not to do, 
This, teach me more than hell to shun, 
That, more than heaven pursue." 

The experience of moralists in China coincides, how- 
ever, with that of the West in showing that the theory of 
virtue as its own reward is too refined for the mass of 
mankind. One, here and there, who is moulded of 
purer clay, may be seized with a kind of Platonic passion 
for virtue, but the great majority are so constituted that 
to them virtue has no charms aside from happiness. Nor 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 153 

is this of necessity an ignoble sentiment ; for, in this case, 
what God has joined together it may not be possible for; 
man to put asunder, — " Happiness (to quote a Chinese 
saying), follows in the footsteps of virtue, as shadow 
follows substance." Are we not told that even Moses had 
" respect unto the recompense of the reward ? '' 

When Buddhists imported from India a distinct notion 
of a future Hfe, their doctrine of transmigration was first 
adopted by the Taoists, and afterwards accepted by many 
who never ceased to call themselves disciples of Con- 
fucius. All parties felt that an immense reinforcement 
was added to the sanctions of morality. Instead of the 
shadowy idea of a vicarious recompense, reserved for 
one's posterity in some remote age, came the conviction 
that each individual soul, sooner or later, inevitably reaps 
the reward of its deeds ; — a conviction which took so 
strong a hold on the public mind as to become the foun- 
dation for a mixed school of moral teaching. 

In the tracts of this mixed school, Confucianism may 
in some cases be the leading element, Taoism or Bud- 
dhism in others ; but the most powerful argument to incite 
to good, and deter from evil, is always the certainty of 
retribution in a future life. 

The two most celebrated tracts in this department, if 
not in the whole cycle of Chinese literature, are dis- 
tinctly on the subject of retribution. They are the Kan 
Ying P'ien, and the Yin Chi Wen. Each bears the name 
of a Taoist divinity, — one goes under the auspices of 
Laotze, the other under those of Wen Chiang. One sets 
out with the declaration that " Happiness and Misery 
never enter a door until they are invited by the occupant 
of the house." " They are the reward that follows good 
and evil, as surely as a shadow follows a body." The 
other begins with a statement that its beatified author 



154 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

practised virtue through no fewer than seventeen Hves or 
stages of existence before he attained to perfect feHcity. 
Starting from this point, each unfolds its text with ad- 
mirable skill, building a rainbow arch of virtues, with 
one foot resting on the earth, and the other lost in the 
blue of heaven ; while the vices are depicted in fiery colors, 
on a back-ground of utter darkness. 

While on this branch of the subject, a very vulgar 
tract ought to be noticed, which has perhaps a wider cur- 
rency than either of the preceding. Like them, the Yii 
Li Ch'ao Chuan, or String of Pearls, is devoted to the 
doctrine of retribution. Instead, however, of insisting on 
true morality, this treatise spends its force in clothing the 
infernal world with imaginary horrors. They are drawn 
in such colors that they are not Dantesque, but grotesque. 
The letter press is accompanied by pictorial illustrations, 
in which one sees a soul in the process of being sawn 
in twain, or pounded in a mortar; a bridge from which 
sinners are precipitated into a field of up-turned sword 
points; a cauldron of boiling water in which they stew 
and simmer for ages; then a bed of ice on which they 
freeze for an equal period; together with other scenes 
equally adapted to bring a wholesome doctrine into con- 
tempt. 

An idea, to which this gross view of retribution natur- 
ally gives rise, is that of opening a debt and credit ac- 
count with the chancery of Heaven. Such account books 
form a distinct class of tracts. On one side are ranged 
all conceivable bad actions, each stamped with its ex- 
change value according to a fixed tariff. The Chinese 
moralist has not, like Tetzel, gone so far as to convert this 
numerical valuation into a sale of indulgences, but we 
may be sure that the ingenuity of the reader does not 
fail to find out a way^- 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 155 

" To atone for sins he has a mind to, 
By doing things he's not incUned to." 

The artifice of keeping with one's heart such an ac- 
count current is one which, if properly conducted, might 
end in the practice of virtue. Frankhn tried something 
of the kind with success, and he tells us that it enabled 
him to make such proficiency in the grace of humility 
that he grew proud of it. Among tracts of the second 
category — those that inculcate particular virtues — I may 
mention the Hsiao Ching, or Manual of Filial Duty, de- 
scribed in a previous chapter. More ancient than any of 
its class, it is also more venerated, being referred to Con- 
fucius himself, whose discourses on the subject were 
taken down by one of his most eminent disciples. While 
its origin is apocryphal, its fullness and perfection give 
it the weight of a classic, while the simplicity and beauty 
of its style make it specially attractive to the young, for 
whose instruction it was composed. 

The teachings of the book culminate in the grand idea 
that filial piety, as the first of virtues, may be made a rule 
and regulator for the entire conduct of Hfe. Every act 
has reference to our ancestors ; good acts reflect honor, 
and bad acts bring disgrace on the name of our pro- 
genitors. The process of reasoning is somewhat similar 
to that which makes the love of God the law of a Chris- 
tian life; but how feeble the sentiment that attaches itself 
to the moss-covered monuments of dead ancestors, in 
comparison with love to a living God, whom we are 
privileged to call our Father in Heaven ! 

As in China all social, political, and even religious obli- 
gations center in the duty of filial piety, that cardinal 
virtue is, as might be expected, the theme of innumerable 
hortatory compositions. Some of them are excellent 
from every point of view ; but not a few are tinged with 



156 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

extravagance, extolling the merits of children who have 
saved the Hves of parents by mixing medicines with their 
own blood, or giving them broth made of their own 
flesh.* 

There is one, and that the most popular of all, which 
sinks to a depth of silliness quite beyond anything at- 
tained by Mother Goose. I refer to the stories of the 
Four-and-Twenty Filial Children. 

One of those worthies is held in remembrance because, 
when his parents had lapsed into second childhood, he, at 
the age of threescore and ten, dressed himself in parti- 
coloured vestments, and acted the clown to make them 
laugh. Another, when a little boy, was seen lying on the 
ice; and, when questioned as to his object, replied that 
he " wished to melt it to catch a fish for his mother.'' 
One of them, hearing a physician commend the virtues of 
milk freshly drawn from the teats of a wild deer, dis- 
guised himself as a deer in order to procure the precious 
beverage for his invalid mother. One of them, on the 
occurrence of a thunder storm, always threw himself on 
his mother's grave, saying — " Mother, your boy is with 
you, do not be afraid." The other stories are equally 
foolish, and some of them positively wicked ; yet Chi- 
nese artists vie with each other in embellishing this 
precious nonsense, and the greatest men of China make 
a merit of writing out the text for engraving on 
wood. 

Is it not probable that these exaggerated views of filial 

* For this purpose the flesh is commonly taken from the fatty- 
portions of the thigh; but a morsel of the liver is more effica- 
cious. How young girls (for it is always women who do it) can 
perform on themselves an operation of such difficulty and sur- 
vive is a mystery. Perhaps the best explanation is that such 
statements are figures of speech. 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 157 

piety have had a tendency to dwarf other virtues, and to 
distort the moral character of the Chinese people? The 
duty of speaking the truth, for instance, so much insisted 
on by us of the West, is seldom touched on by the moral 
writers of China. While the foundation stone is neglected 
by these builders, what masses of wood, hay, and stubble, 
do they put in its place! 

It would be easy to load a cart with separate treatises 
on the duty of showing respect to written or printed 
paper. Absurd as are the rhapsodies which Chinese 
scholars indite on this subject, may they not teach a les- 
son to our tract distributors, — the lesson not to show dis- 
respect to their own cargoes of printed paper, by selling 
too cheaply, or giving too lavishly? 

Then we have exhortations in equal quantity to com- 
passion for brute animals. The radical sentiment is just 
and praise-worthy, but the writers rush into extremes as 
before; and, instead of nourishing a well-poised, active 
humanity to man, they make a merit of emancipating 
birds and fish, and of succoring ants that are struggling 
in the water. Under the influence of this literature, a 
society has been formed in Peking for the release of 
captive sparrows ; but I have yet to hear that any society 
has been organized for the suppression of the sale of 
little children, — a traffic which is openly carried on in all 
the cities of China ! Our own Cowper wept over a dead 
hare, and wrote the lines — 

" I would not count upon my list of friends, 
A man who wantonly set foot upon a worm." 

But his pity was not exhausted by such manifesta- 
tions. He admitted man among the objects of his com- 
passion, and sounded the note of anti-slavery long be- 
fore the abolition of the trade in slaves : — 



158 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

" Fleecy locks and black complexion 
Cannot forfeit nature's claim; 
Skins may differ, but affection 
Dwells in white and black the same." 

Against particular vices there are numerous tracts 
which are earnest and powerful. In some, the enormities 
of infanticide are set forth ; some denounce the folly of 
gambling; others deal in scathing terms with licentious 
practices of every description ; still others dissuade from 
opium-smoking, drunkenness, and the like. 

Tracts of a distinctly religious type are neither so 
abundant, nor so highly esteemed, as those that aim to 
mend the morals of mankind. Yet they are not want- 
ing; — one meets every day with little pamphlets com- 
mending the worship of particular divinities. Here is 
one that points out the way to obtain the favor of Chang 
Hsien, the greatest of the Taoist genii, who rewards his 
worshippers with the blessing of offspring. Here is an- 
other which consists chiefly of prayers to Kuan Yin, the 
goddess of mercy. The prayers are in Sanscrit, and 
utterly unintelligible to those who use them. 

Of polemics there are very few, — indeed I have only 
seen one or two of modern origin. The earlier ages 
teemed with them ; and the literati, by inserting in every 
collection of ancient essays, Han Yu's ferocious onslaught 
on Buddhism, seek to keep alive a feeling of animosity 
against the Indian creed. Time, however, is a great 
peace-maker. The conflicting elements, that once threat- 
ened to turn this celestial empire into primeval chaos, 
have gradually subsided into a stable equilibrium. 

Antagonistic and mutually destructive, their teachings 
may be found mixed together in most of the tracts of 
which we have been speaking. In one of them, in a 
conspicuous place, at the head of a list of good actions. 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA 159 

stands the injunction — Kuang Hsing San Chiao, " Spread 
far and wide the Three ReHgions." 

A little treatise full of deep thought, which shows to 
advantage the blending of the three creeds, is Ts'ai Ken 
Van. Its author, Hung Ying Ming, was a moralist of a 
high order, but nothing is known of him except that he 
lived about three centuries ago. 

Philosophers tell us of a time, happily far in the future, 
when earth shall no more be the scene of terrific storms, 
— when north wind and south wind shall cease to con- 
tend for the mastery, because the atmosphere no longer 
receives sufficient heat from the sun to disturb its re- 
pose. It is the heat of conviction that engenders contro- 
versy. Where that has ceased, is there not reason 10 
suspect that faith has lost its vitality, and that sincere 
convictions no longer exist? 

In ancient Rome, the gods of the conquered nations 
came trooping into the capital; and all of them, in the 
lapse of time, were seated in friendly conclave in the 
pantheon of Agrippa. They were at peace, because they 
were dead. Lucian, in his satirical dialogues, deals with 
dead gods as well as with dead men; but those dead 
gods were galvanized into life by the contact of Chris- 
tianity. Christ came into their midst, and, at his touch, 
their dry bones began to shake, and they rose up to do 
battle against the Lord of Life, History repeats itself. 
What we have seen in Rome, is now taking place in 
China. The calm of ages is disturbed, and the heat of 
controversy begins to show itself anew; but the only 
polemics from the pagan camp are those in which the 
adherents of the Three Religions combine in vituperative 
attacks on that arrogant creed which claims for itself 
the homage of the world. 

Inert as are the creeds of paganism, in comparison with 



i6o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the undying energies of our Holy Faith, it would be 
wrong to infer that they are either active for evil, or 
powerless for good. To those who have not the sun, 
star-light is oftentimes a precious guide. 

In looking over a vast variety of native tracts, we are 
struck by the fact that authors of all the schools agree 
in seeking to fortify their moral teachings by the sanc- 
tions of religion. Even the Confucianists ascribe to their 
canonical books the authority of inspiration. Chu Fu- 
tze, sceptical as he was on most subjects, admitted the 
claim of the Confucian teachings to a superhuman origin. 
Later writers naturally sought to invest their produc- 
tions with the sanctity derived from an inspired source. 
The two other creeds peopled the heavens with deified 
mortals. With them it was easy to hold communication, 
and from them oracular responses were obtained. If 
the divinities deigned to give prescriptions for the cure 
of measles or toothache, why not for the maladies of the 
human mind? The medium of response was planchette, 
an instrument known to the Chinese a thousand years 
before it began to make a figure in Europe. I have my- 
self seen effusions in faultless verse, fresh from the pens 
of deified spirits. 

In connecting rehgion with morals, these writers agree 
with us ; for what a feeble thing would be a moral prop- 
aganda unaided by the fervor of religious faith ! 

One of the literary lights of the English firmament 
defines religion as " morality touched by emotion." The 
definition is neither logical nor complete; but it hits in 
happy phrase one feature of a union formed by two dis- 
tinct things. Morality, to borrow the imagery of a 
Hebrew poet, springs up out of the earth, and religion 
looks down from Heaven. Morality is the body, cold 
and beautiful until religion, which is its soul, enters into 



NATIVE TRACTS OF CHINA i6i 

it and gives it life; or, in the words of Mr. Arnold, 
" touches it with emotion." 

The love of God is religion ; the love of man, morality. 
The two must be combined, in order to give the highest 
effect to an enterprise like that of our Tract Societies. 
The assertion may sound strange, but it is true neverthe- 
less, that morality is our supreme object. If men were 
to persist in the debasing practices inseparable from hea- 
thenism, would we deem it worth while to substitute the 
names of Jehovah and Jesus for those of Kuan Ti and 
Buddha? 

We should not fail to recognize how much has been 
done by the agency of native tracts to prepare the way 
for the tractarian crusade, in which we are now em- 
barked. It is owing to them that our efforts in this 
direction meet with a respectful welcome. Let us, on our 
part, cultivate a sympathy for all that is good in native 
books and native methods, and endeavor to learn from 
them something that may enable us more efficiently to 
carry on our own enterprise. 

That which we may study with most advantage is 
their mode of communicating instruction on religious and 
moral subjects. No missionary should undertake the 
composition of a Christian tract, without having first made 
himself acquainted with a wide range of native tracts. 
Not only may he learn from them how to treat his sub- 
ject in a style at once concise and lucid, — respectable in 
the eyes of the learned, yet not above the comprehension 
of the vulgar, — what is more, he may learn from them 
the spiritual wants of the audience whom he proposes to 
instruct and relieve. 

A weakness of tEe native tract lies in the fact that, 
for the most part, elegant as it may be, it contains noth- 
ing but what everybody knows. We, in the preparation 



i62 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

of our tracts, can draw on resources that lie beyond the 
reach of native authors. In addition to the inestimable 
treasures of Revealed Truth, we have Geography, His- 
tory, Astronomy, Physics, to communicate, — not to speak 
of our improved systems of Mental and Moral Philosophy. 
These sciences are not only powerful for the over- 
throw of superstition, — they are essential to the under- 
standing of religious truth. Every new tract ought to 
contain more or less on these subjects; and some tracts 
should be entirely devoted to them, and to the religious 
applications of which they are so readily susceptible. 
Would it not be well for our Tract Societies to prepare 
a series — ^not of text-books, for that task has been under- 
taken by another association — but of primers, which, 
along with religious truth, shall impart the elements of 
science? By acting on this principle, our publications 
will be made in the highest sense an educational agency. 
They will command the respect of the better classes, 
and not only win them away from grovelling supersti- 
tions, but lead high and low away from their imperfect 
lights to Him who is the Light of the World. 



BOOK III 

Religion and Philosophy of the 
Chinese 



XI 



THE SAN CHIAO^ OR THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 

THE religious experience of the Chinese is worthy 
of attentive study. Detached at an early period 
from the parent stock, and for thousands of 
years holding but little intercourse with other branches 
of the human family, we are able to ascertain with a 
good degree of precision those ideas which constituted 
their original inheritance, and to trace in history the 
development or corruption of their primitive beliefs. 
Midway in their long career, they imported from India 
an exotic system, completing the triad of their authorized 
creeds. 

In their experience each of the leading systems has been 
fairly tested. The arena has been large enough, and the 
duration of the experiment long enough, to admit of each 
working out its full results. These experiments are of 
the greater value, because they have been wrought out 
in the midst of a highly organized society, and in connec- 
tion with a high degree of intellectual culture. 

In views and practices, the Chinese of to-day are poly- 
theistic and idolatrous. The evidence of this strikes the 
attention of the voyager on every hand. In the sanpan 
that carries him to the shore, he discovers a small shrine 
which contains an image of the river-god, the god of 
wealth, or Kuan Yin (the goddess of mercy). His eye 
is charmed by the picturesqueness of pagodas perched on 
mountain-crags, and monasteries nestling in sequestered 
dells ; and, on entering even a small town, he is surprised 
at the extent, if not the magnificence, of temples erected 

165 



i66 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

to Ch'eng Huang, the " city defender," and Wen Ch'ang, 
the patron of letters. Heaps of gilt paper are consumed 
in the streets, accompanied by volleys of fire-crackers. 
Bonzes, modulating their voices by the sound of a wooden 
rattle, fill the air with their melancholy chant ; and pro- 
cessions wind through narrow lanes, bearing on their 
shoulders a silver efhgy of the ** dragon king," the god 
of rain. 

These temples, images, and symbols, he is informed, 
all belong to San Chiao (three religions). All three are 
equally idolatrous, and he inquires in vain for any in- 
fluential native sect, which, more enlightened or philo- 
sophical than the rest, raises a protest against the prevail- 
ing superstition. Yet, on acquiring the language and 
studying the popular superstitions in their myriad fan- 
tastic shapes, he begins to discover traces of a religious 
sentiment, deep and real, which is not connected with any 
of the objects of popular worship — a veneration for T'ien, 
or Heaven, and a belief that in the visible heavens there 
resides som^e vague power who provides for the wants of 
men, and rewards them according to their deeds. 

Personified as Lao T'ien Yeh — not Heavenly Father, as 
it expresses the Christian's conception of combined tender- 
ness and majesty, but literally " Old Father Heaven," 
much as we say " Old Father Time " — or designated by 
a hundred other appellations, this august but unknown 
Being, though universally acknowledged, is invoked or 
worshipped only to a very limiited extent. Some, at the 
close of the year, present a thank-offering to the Great 
Power who has controlled the course of its events ; others 
burn a stick of incense every evening under the open sky ; 
and in the marriage ceremony all classes bow down before 
T'ien as the first of the five objects of veneration.* 

* The other four are the earth, the prince, parents, and teachers. 




ri--*.««.-»*,«.«.^*-_ - r,. ^ 



THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN 




THE ALTAR OF HEAVEN 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 167 

When taxed with ingratitude in neglecting to honor 
that Being on whom they depend for existence, the 
Chinese uniformly reply, *' It is not ingratitude, but rev- 
erence, that prevents our worship. He is too great for us 
to worship. None but the Emperor is worthy to lay an 
offering on the altar of Heaven." In conformity with 
this sentiment, the Emperor, as the high priest and medi- 
ator of his people, celebrates in Peking the worship of 
Heaven with imposing ceremonies. 

Within the gates of the southern division of the capi- 
tal, and surrounded by a sacred grove so extensive that 
the silence of its deep shades is never broken by the 
noises of the busy world, stands the Temple of Heaven. 
It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent 
azure is intended to represent the form and color of the 
aerial vault. It contains no image, and the solemn rites 
are not performed within the tower; but, on a marble 
altar which stands before it, a bullock is offered once a 
year as a burnt-sacrifice, while the master of the Empire 
prostrates himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Uni- 
verse.* 

This is the high-place of Chinese devotion ; and the 
thoughtful visitor feels that he ought to tread its courts 
with unsandalled feet.f For no vulgar idolatry has en- 
tered here : this mountain-top still stands above the waves 
of corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests 

* Another tower of similar structure but larger dimensions 
stands in a separate enclosure as a kind of vestibule to the more 
sacred place, and here it is that the Emperor prays for " fruitful 
seasons." 

f Dr. Legge, the distinguished translator of the Chinese clas- 
sics, visiting Peking some years after this was written, actually 
" put his shoes from off his feet " before ascending the steps of 
the great altar. Yet in 1900 this sacred spot was converted into 
a barrack for British troops ! 



1 68 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

a faint ray of the primeval faith. The tablet which rep- 
resents the invisible Deity is inscribed with the name of 
Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler ; and as we contemplate the 
Majesty of the Empire prostrate before it, while the 
smoke ascends from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts 
are irresistibly carried back to the time when the 
King of Salem officiated as " Priest of the Most High 
God." 

The writings and the institutions of the Chinese are 
not, like those of the Hindus and the Hebrews, pervaded 
with the idea of God. It is, nevertheless, expressed in 
their ancient books with so much clearness as to make 
us wonder and lament that it has left so faint an impres- 
sion on the national mind. 

In their books of History it is recorded that music was 
invented for the praise of Shang Ti. Rival claimants for 
the throne appeal to the judgment of Shang Ti. He is the 
arbiter of nations, and, while actuated by benevolence, is 
yet capable of being provoked to wrath by the iniquities of 
men. In the Book of Changes he is represented as restor- 
ing life to torpid nature on the return of spring. In the 
Book of Rites it is said that the ancients " prayed for grain 
to Shang Ti," and presented in offering a bullock, which 
must be without blemish, and stall-fed for three months 
before the day of sacrifice. In the Book of Odes, mostly 
composed from eight hundred to a thousand years before 
the Christian era, and containing fragments of still 
higher antiquity, Shang Ti is represented as seated on a 
lofty throne, while the spirits of the good " walk up and 
down on his right and left." 

In none of these writings is Shang Ti clothed in the 
human form or debased by human passion like the Zeus 
of the Greek. There is in them even less of anthropo- 
morphism than we find in the representations of Jehovah 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 169 

in the Hebrew Scriptures. The nearest approach to ex- 
hibiting him in the human form is the ascription to 
Shang Ti of a " huge footprint," probably an impression 
on some mass of rock. Educated Chinese, on embracing 
Christianity, assert that the Shang Ti of their fathers was 
identical with the T'ien Chu, the Lord of Heaven, whom 
they are taught to worship. Paul Hsiu, a member of the 
Hanlin Academy, and cabinet minister under the Ming 
dynasty, makes this assertion in an eloquent apology ad- 
dressed to the throne in behalf of his new faith and its 
teachers. 

There is no need of an extended argument, to establisH 
the fact that the early Chinese were by no means desti- 
tute of the knowledge of God. They did not, indeed, 
know him as the Creator, but they recognized him as su- 
preme in providence, and without beginning or end. 

Whence came this conception? Was it the mature re- 
sult of ages of speculation, or was it brought down from 
remote antiquity on the stream of patriarchal tradition? 
The latter, we think, is the only probable hypothesis. 
In the earlier books of the Chinese there is no trace of 
speculative inquiry. They raise no question as to the na- 
ture of Shang Ti, or the grounds of their faith in such a 
being, but in their first pages allude to him as already 
well known, and speak of burnt-offerings made to him 
on mountain-tops as an established rite. Indeed, the idea 
of Shang Ti, when it first meets us, is not in the process 
of development, but already in the first stages of decay. 
The beginnings of that idolatry by which it was subse- 
quently almost obliterated are distinctly traceable. The 
heavenly bodies, the spirits of the hills and rivers, and 
even the spirits of deceased men, were admitted to a 
share in the divine honors of Shang Ti. The religious 
sentiment was frittered away by being directed to a mul- 



170 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tiplicity of objects, and the popular mind seemed to take 
refuge among the creatures of its own fancy, as Adam 
did amidst the trees of the Garden, from the terrible idea 
of a holy God. 

The worship of the Supreme Ruler, grand as it is, is 
in the present day like a ray of the sun falling upon an 
iceberg, so far as its influence on the public mind is con- 
cerned. It is limited to the emperor and to a few re- 
markable and august manifestations of public ritual ; but 
you do not find it in the household. You do not find it 
on the lips of the people. You do not find that God in 
that form has taken up his abode with men. He is still 
far remote, on the summit of an icy Olympus, as it were, 
although to a certain extent dimly perceived by the mind 
of the Chinese nation. 

In order to understand the mutual relations of these 
three systems — in other words, to understand the relig- 
ious aspects of China at the present day — it will be neces- 
sary to give separate attention to the rise and progress 
of each. We begin with Confucianism. 

The Confucian system did not originate with Con- 
fucius. He took the records of remote antiquity and 
sifted them, in such wise, however, as to exert in a most 
effective manner the influence of an editor, giving to the 
readers of all succeeding ages only that which he wished 
to produce its effect on the national mind. We conse- 
quently date Confucianism from the beginning of his 
records, — from the time of Yao and Shun, his favorite 
models of virtue, — twenty-two centuries before the 
Christian era. 

There are two classes of great men who leave their 
mark on the condition of their species — those who change 
the course of history without any far-reaching purpose, 
much as a falling cliff changes the direction of a stream ; 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 171 

and those, again, who, like skilful engineers, excavate a 
channel for the thought of future generations. Pre- 
eminent among the latter stands the name of Confucius. 
Honored during his lifetime to such a degree that the 
princes of several states lamented his decease like that of 
a father, his influence has deepened with time and ex- 
tended with the swelling multitudes of his people. Bud- 
dhism and Taoism have both fallen into a state of irre- 
trievable decay, but the influence and the memory of Con- 
fucius continue as green as the cypresses that shade his 
tomb. After the lapse of three and twenty centuries, he 
has a temple in every city, and an efligy in every school- 
room. He is venerated as the fountain of wisdom by all 
the votaries of letters, and worshipped by the mandarins 
of the realm as the author of their civil polity. The es- 
timation in which his teachings continue to be held is well 
exhibited in the reply which the people of Shantung, his 
native province, gave to a missionary who, some fifty 
years ago, offered them Christian books : *' We have 
seen your books," said they, '* and neither desire nor ap- 
prove them. The instructions of our Sage are sufficient 
for us, and they are superior to any foreign doctrines that 
you can bring us." * 

Born B. c. 551, and endowed with uncommon talents, 
Confucius was far from relying on the fertility of his 
own genius. *' Reading without thought is fruitless, and 
thought without reading dangerous," is a maxim which 
he taught his disciples, and one which he had doubtless 
followed in the formation of his own mind. China al- 
ready possessed accumulated treasures of literature and 
history. With these materials he stored his memory, and 

* Since that date a change has come over the people of Shan- 
tung, In no other province has Christianity met with so ready a 
reception. 



172 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

by the aid of reflection digested them into a system for 
the use of posterity. 

Filled with enthusiasm by the study of the ancients, and 
mourning over the degeneracy of his own times, he en- 
tered at an early age on the vocation of reformer. He 
at first sought to effect his objects by obtaining civil office 
and setting an example of good government, as well as 
by giving instruction to those who became his disciples. 
At the age of fifty-five he was advanced to the premier- 
ship of his native State ; and in a few months the improve- 
ment in the public morals was manifest. Valuables 
might be exposed in the street without being stolen, and 
shepherds abandoned the practice of filling their sheep 
with water before leading them to market. 

A singular circumstance led him to renounce political 
life. The little kingdom of Lu grew apace in wealth and 
prosperity; and the prince of a rival State, in order to 
prevent its acquiring an ascendency in the politics of the 
Empire, felt it necessary to counteract the influence of 
the wise legislator. Resorting to a stratagem similar to 
that which Louis XIV. employed with Charles 11., he 
sent instead of brave generals or astute statesmen, a band 
of beautiful girls who were skilled in music and dancing. 
The prince of Lu, young and amorous, was caught in the 
snare, and, giving the rein to pleasure, abandoned all the 
schemes of reform with which he had been inspired by 
the counsels of the Sage. Disappointed and disgusted, 
Confucius retired into private life. 

Thwarted, as he had often been, by royal pride and 
official jealousy, he henceforth endeavored to attain his 
ends by a less direct but more certain method. He de- 
voted himself more than ever to the instruction of youth, 
and to the collection of those monuments of ancient wis- 
dom, which form the basis of his teaching. His fame 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 173 

attracted young men of promise from all the surrounding 
principalities. No fewer than three thousand received 
his instructions, among whom five hundred became dis- 
tinguished mandarins, and seventy-two of them are en- 
rolled on the list of the sages of the Empire. Through 
these and the books which he edited subsequently to this 
period, there can be no doubt that he exerted a greater 
influence on the destinies of the Empire than he could 
have done had he been seated on the Imperial throne. 
He won for himself the title of Stt Wang, " the un- 
sceptred monarch," whose intellectual sway is acknowl- 
edged by all ages.* 

Confucius understood the power of proverbs, and, in- 
corporating into his system such as met his approval, he 
cast his own teachings in the same mould. His speeches 
are laconic and oracular, and he has transmitted to pos- 
terity a body of political ethics expressed in formulae so 
brief and comprehensive that it may easily^ be retained in 
the weakest memory. Thus, chiin ch'en, fu tze, fu fu, 
hsiung ti, p'eng yu are ten syllables which every boy in 
China has at his tongue's end. They contain the entire 
framework of the social fabric — the " five relations " of 
sovereign and subject, parent and child, husband and 
w^ife, brother and brother, friend and friend, which, ac- 
cording to the Chinese, comprehend the whole duty of 
man as a social being. The five cardinal virtues — benevo- 
lence, justice, order, prudence, and fidelity — so essen- 
tial to the well-being of society, Confucius inculcated in 
the five syllables jen, i, It, chih, hsin. 

The following sentences, taken from his miscellaneous 
discourses, may serve as illustrations of both the style 
and the matter of his teaching : 

* For an account of his family see Note II. at the end of this 
chapter. 



174 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

" Good government consists in making the prince a 
prince, the subject a subject, the parent a parent, and the 
child a child." 

'' Beware of doing to another what you would not that 
others should do to you." 

** He that is not oifended at being misunderstood is a 
superior man." 

*' Have no friend who is inferior to yourself in virtue.'' 

" Be not afraid to correct a fault. He that knows the 
right and fears to do it is not a brave man." 

** If you guide the people by laws, and enforce the laws 
by punishment, they will lose the sense of shame and seek 
to evade them ; but if you guide them by a virtuous ex- 
ample, and diffuse among them a love of order, they will 
be ashamed to transgress." 

" To know what we know, and what we do not know, 
is knowledge." 

** We know not life, how can we know death? " 

** The filial son is one who gives his parents no anxiety 
but for his health." 

Filial piety, Confucius taught, is not merely a domestic 
virtue, but diffuses its influence through all the actions 
of life. A son who disgraces his parents in any way is 
unfilial ; one who maltreats a brother or a relative, forget- 
ful of the bonds of a common parentage, is unfilial. This 
powerful motive is thus rendered expansive in its applica- 
tion, like piety to God in the Christian system, for which, 
indeed, it serves as a partial substitute. It is beautifully 
elaborated in the Hsiao Ching, the most popular of the 
Thirteen Classics. 

Virtue, Confucius taught with Aristotle, is the mean 
between two vices, and this theory is developed by his 
grandson in the Chung Yung, the sublimest of the sacred 
books. 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 175 

The secret of good government, he taught, consists in 
the cultivation of personal virtue on the part of rulers; 
and the connection between private morals and national 
politics is well set forth in the Ta Hsiieh, or Great Study. 

This brief tractate is the only formal composition, with 
the exception of an outline of history, which the Great 
Sage put forth as the product of his own pen. " I am 
an editor, and not an author," is the modest account 
which he gives of himself, and it is mainly to his labors 
in this department that China is indebted for her knowl- 
edge of antecedent antiquity. 

The spirit in which he discharged this double duty to 
the past and future may be inferred from the impressive 
ceremony with which he concluded his great task. As- 
sembling his disciples, he led them to the summit of a 
neighboring hill, where sacrifices were usually offered. 
Here he erected an altar, and placing on it an edition of 
the sacred books which he had just completed, the gray- 
haired philosopher, now seventy years of age, fell on his 
knees, devoutly returned thanks for having had life and 
strength granted him to accomplish that laborious under- 
taking, at the same time imploring that the benefit his 
countrymen would receive from it might not be small. 
" Chinese pictures," says Pauthier, " represent the Sage 
in the attitude of supplication, and a beam of Hght or a 
rainbow descending on the sacred volumes, while his 
disciples stand around him in admiring wonder." * 

Thales expired about the time Confucius drew his in- 
fant breath, and Pythagoras was his contemporary; but 
the only names among the Greeks which admit of com- 
parison with that of Confucius are Socrates and Aristotle, 
the former of whom revolutionized the philosophy of 

* Since reading this passage in Pauthier, I have myself seen 
this picture in a native pictorial biography of Confucius. 



176 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Greece, and the latter ruled the dialectics of mediaeval 
Europe. Without the discursive eloquence of the one or 
the logical acumen of the other, Confucius surpassed 
them both in practical wisdom, and exceeds them im- 
measurably in the depth, extent, and permanence of his 
influence. 

It is not surprising that when missionaries attempt to 
direct their attention to the Saviour, the Chinese point to 
Confucius and challenge comparison; nor that they 
should sometimes fail to be satisfied with the arguments 
employed to establish the superiority of Jesus Christ. But 
the thoughtful Christian who has studied the canonical 
books of China can hardly return to the perusal of the 
New Testament without a deeper conviction of its divine 
authority. In the Confucian classics he detects none of 
that impurity which defiles the pages of Greek and Roman 
authors, and none of that monstrous mythology which 
constitutes so large a portion of the sacred books of the 
Hindoos, but he discovers defects enough to make him 
turn with gratitude to the revelations of a " Greater 
Teacher." 

Disgusted at the superstitions of the vulgar, and de- 
sirous of guarding his followers against similar excesses, 
Confucius led them into the opposite extreme of scepti- 
cism. He ignored, if he did not deny, those cardinal doc- 
trines of all religion, the immortality of the soul, and the 
personal existence of God, both of which were currently 
received in his day. In place of Shang Ti (Supreme 
Ruler), the name under which the God of Nature had 
been worshipped in earlier ages, he made use of the vague 
appellation T'ien (Heaven) ; thus opening the way, on 
the one hand, for that atheism with which their modern 
philosophy is so deeply infected, and, on the other, for 
that idolatry which nothing but the doctrine of a personal 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 177 

God can effectually counteract. When his pupils pro- 
posed inquiries respecting a future state, he either dis- 
couraged them or answered ambiguously, and thus de- 
prived his own precepts of the support they might have 
derived from the sanctions of a coming retribution. Thus 
in a remarkable discourse reported in the Chia Yu — a col- 
lection the authority of which is not, however, above sus- 
picion — he says, " If I should say the soul survives the 
body, I fear the filial would neglect their living parents 
in their zeal to serve their deceased ancestors. If, on the 
contrary, I should say the soul does not survive, I fear 
lest the unfilial should throw away the bodies of their 
parents and leave them unburied." 

We may add that, while his writings abound in the 
praises of virtue, not a line can be found inculcating the 
pursuit of truth. Expediency, not truth, is the goal of 
his system. Contrast with this the Gospel of Christ, 
which pronounces him the only freeman whom the '* truth 
makes free," and promises to his followers " the Spirit 
of Truth " as his richest legacy. 

The style of Confucius was an ipse-dixit dogmatism, 
and it has left its impress on the unreasoning habit of the 
Chinese mind. Jesus Christ appealed to evidence and 
challenged inquiry, and this characteristic of our religion 
has shown itself in the mental development of Christian 
nations. Nor is the contrast less striking in another point. 
Illius dicta, hujus facta laudantur, to borrow the words 
of Cicero, in comparing Cato with Socrates. Confucius 
selected disciples who should be the depositaries of his 
teachings ; Christ chose apostles who should be witnesses 
of his actions. Confucius died lamenting that the edifice 
he had labored so long to erect was crumbling to ruin. 
Christ's death was the crowning act of his life; and his 
last words, " It is finished." 



178 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

It was a philosophy, not a religion, that Confucius 
aimed to propagate. *' Our Master," say his disciples-, 
*' spake little concerning the gods." He preferred to con- 
fine his teachings to the more tangible realities of human 
life; but so far from setting himself to reform the vulgar 
superstition, he conformed to its silly ceremonies and en- 
joined the same course on his disciples. " Treat the gods 
with respect," he said to them, but he added, in terms 
which leave no ambiguity in the meaning of the precept, 
" keep them at a distance," or, rather, " keep out of their 
way." A cold sneer was not sufficient to wither or eradi- 
cate the existing idolatry, and the teachings of Confucius 
gave authority and prevalence to many idolatrous usages 
which were only partially current before his day. 

Confucianism now stands forth as the leading religion 
of the Empire. Its objects of worship are of three classes 
— the powers of nature, ancestors, and heroes. Originally 
recognizing the existence of a Supreme personal Deity, 
it has degenerated into a pantheistic medley, and fenders 
worship to an impersonal anima mundi under the leading 
forms of visible nature. Besides the concrete universe, 
separate honors are paid to the sun, moon„ and stars, 
mountains, rivers, and lakes. 

Of all their religious observances, th'e Worship of an- 
cestors is that which the Chinese regard as the most 
sacred. As ^neas obtained the name of '' Pious " in 
honor of his filial devotion, so the Chinese idea of piety 
rises no higher. The Emperor, according to the Confu- 
cian school, may worship the Spirit of the Universe, but 
for his subjects it is sufficient that each present offerings 
to the spirits of his own ancestors. These rites are per- 
formed either at the family tombs or in the family temple, 
where wooden tablets, inscribecf with their names, are 
preserved as sacred to the memory of the deceased, and 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 179 

worshipped precisely in the same manner as are the 
popular ido^.s. 

The class of deified heroes comprehends illustrious 
sages, eminent sovereigns, faithful statesmen, valiant 
warriors, filial sons, and public benefactors — Confucius 
himself occupying the first place, and constituting, as the 
Chinese say, '' one of a trinity with Heaven and Earth." 

Like Confucianism, Taoism is indigenous to China, 
and, coeval with the former in its origin, it was also co- 
heir to the mixed inheritance of good and evil contained 
in the more ancient creeds. The Taoists derive their 
name from tao, reason, and call themselves Rationalists; 
but, with a marvelous show of profundity, nothing can 
be more irrational than their doctrine and practice. Their 
founder, Li Erh, appears to have possessed a great mind, 
and to have caught glimpses of several sublime truths; 
but he has been sadly misrepresented by his degenerate 
followers. He lived in the sixth century b. c, and was 
contemporary with, but older than, Confucius. So great 
was the fame of his wisdom that the latter philosopher 
sought his instructions ; but, differing from him in mental 
mould as widely as Aristotle did from Plato, he could not 
relish the boldness of his speculations or the vague ob- 
scurity of his style. He never repeated his visit, though 
he always spoke of him with respect and even with ad- 
miration. 

Laotze, the " old Master," is the appellation by which 
the great Taoist is commonly known, and it was probably 
given him during his lifetime to distinguish him from his 
younger rival. The rendering of '' old child " is no more 
to be received than the fiction of eighty years' gestation 
invented to account for it. 

Laotze bequeathed his doctrines to posterity in " five 
thousand words," which compose the Tao Te Ching, the 



i8o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Rule of Reason and Virtue. In expression, this work is 
extremely sententious ; and in the form of its composition, 
semi-poetical. It abounds in acute apothegms, and some 
of its passages rise to the character of sublimity; but so 
incoherent are its contents that it is impossible for any 
literal interpretation to form them into a system. Its 
inconsistencies, however, readily yield to that universal 
solvent — the hypothesis of a mystical meaning under- 
lying the letter of the text. The following passage ap- 
pears to embody some obscure but lofty conceptions of 
the True God : 

" That which is invisible is called yi. 

That which is inaudible is called hsi. 

That which is impalpable is called wei. 

These three are inscrutable, and blended in one. 

The first is not the brighter ; nor the last the darker. 

It is interminable, ineffable, and existed when there 
was nothing. 

A shape without shape, a form without form. 

A confounding mystery ! 

Go back, you cannot discover its beginning. 

Go forward, you cannot find its end. 

Take the ancient Reason to govern the present. 

And you will know the origin of old. 

This is the first principle of Tao." 

Some European scholars discover here a notion of the 
Trinity, and, combining the syllables yi, hsi, and wei — for 
which process, however, they are unable to assign any 
very good reason — they obtain yihsiwei, which they ac- 
cept as a distorted representation of the name Jehovah. 
Laotze is said to have travelled in countries to the west 
of China, where it is supposed he may have met with 
Jews, and learned from them the name and nature of the 
Supreme Being. It is an interesting fact that native 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA i8i 

commentators, though knowing nothing of these conjec- 
tures, recognize in the passage a description of Shang Ti, 
the God of the Chinese patriarchs ; and the three syllables 
of which the acrostic is composed are admitted to have 
no assignable meaning in the Chinese language. 

Here we find a connection between the degenerate 
philosophy of after-ages and the pure fountain of prime- 
val truth. In fact, this very Shang Ti, though they have 
debased the name by bestowing it on a whole class of 
their dii super lores, is still enthroned on the summit of 
the Taoist Olympus, with ascriptions more expressive of 
his absolute divinity than any to be met with in the 
canonical books of the Confucian school. At the head 
of their Theogony stands the triad of the San Ching, the 
" Three Pure " ones ; the first of whom is styled " The 
mysterious sovereign who has no superior ; " " The self- 
existent source and beginning;" "The honored one of 
Heaven." 

He is said to have created the " three worlds ; " to have 
produced men and gods ; to have set the stars in motion, 
and caused the planets to revolve. But, alas ! this cata- 
logue of sublime titles and divine attributes is the epitaph 
of a buried faith. The Taoists persuaded themselves that 
this August Being, wrapped in the solitude of his own 
perfections, had delegated the government of the universe 
to a subordinate, whom they style Yii Huang Shang Ti. 
The former has dwindled into an inoperative idea, the 
latter is recognized as the actual God ; and this deity, who 
plays mayor of the palace to a roi faineant, is regarded 
as the apotheosis of a mortal by the name of Chang, an 
ancestor of the present hierarch of the Taoist religion. 
It is not unusual, after discoursing to them of the at- 
tributes of the True God, to hear the people exclaim, 
" That is our Yu Huang Shang Ti," 



1 82 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In its philosophy, this school is radically and thoroughly 
materialistic. The soul itself they regard as a material 
substance, though of a more refined quality than the body 
it inhabits. Liable to dissolution, together with the body, 
it may be rendered capable of surviving the wreck by 
undergoing a previous discipline. Even the body is ca- 
pable of becoming invulnerable by the stroke of death, 
so that the etherealized form will, instead of being laid in 
the grave, be wafted away to the abodes of the genii. 
It is scarcely possible to represent the extent to which 
this idea fired the minds of the Chinese for ages after 
its promulgation, or to estimate the magnitude of its con- 
sequences. The prospect of a corporeal immortality to 
be conquered by a laborious discipline; an immortality 
which was not the heritage of the many, but might be- 
come the prize of a few, had for them attractions far 
stronger than a shadowy existence in the land of spirits ; 
and they sought it with an eagerness amounting to frenzy. 
The elixir of life became a grand object of pursuit — 
witness these lines which I render from a well-known 
Chinese poem, which illustrates at once its spirit and 
method : — 

" A prince the draught immortal went to seek 
And finding it, he soared above the spheres. 
In mountain caverns he had dwelt a week, 
Of human time, it was a thousand years." 

Alchemy, with its foolish failures and grand achieve- 
ments, sprang directly from the religion of Tao.* 

The leading principle of Taoism, of which their dogma 
concerning the human soul is only a particular applica- 
tion, is that every species of matter possesses a soul — 
a subtile essence that may become endowed with in- 

* See chapter on Alchemy in this volume. 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 183 

dividual conscious life. Freed from their grosser ele- 
ments, these become the genii that preside over the vari- 
ous departments of nature. Some wander at will through 
the realmxS of space, endowed with a protean facility of 
transformation ; others, more pure and ethereal, rise to 
the regions of the stars, and take their places in the 
firmament. Thus the five principal planets are called by 
the names of the five terrestrial elements from which they 
are believed to have originated, and over which they are 
regarded as presiding. They are not worlds, but divini- 
ties, and their motions control the destinies of men and 
things — a notion which has done much to inspire the zeal 
of the Chinese for recording the phenomena of the 
heavens. 

A theogony like this is rich in the elements of poetry; 
and most of the machinery in Chinese works of imagina- 
tion is, in fact, derived from this source. The Liao Chai, 
for example, a collection of marvelous tales which, in 
their general character, may be compared with the Meta- 
morphoses of Ovid, is largely founded on the Taoist 
mythology. 

In accordance with the materialistic character of the 
Taoist sect, nearly all the gods whom the Chinese regard 
as presiding over their material interests originated with 
this school. The god of rain, the god of fire, the god of 
medicine, the god of agriculture, and the lares, or kitchen 
gods, are among the principal of this class. 

A system which supplies deities answering to the lead- 
ing wants and desires of mankind cannot be uninfluential ; 
but, in addition to the strong motives that attract wor- 
shippers to their temples, the Taoist priesthood possess 
two independent sources of influence. They hold the 
monopoly of geomancy, a superstitious art which pro- 
fesses to select on scientific principles those localities that 



1 84 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

are most propitious for building and burial; and they 
have succeeded in persuading the people that they alone 
are able to secure them from annoyance by evil spirits. 
The philosophy of Tao has thus not only given birth to a 
religion, but degenerated into a system of magical impos- 
ture, presided over by an arch-magician who lives in al- 
most imperial state,* and sways the sceptre over the 
spirits of the invisible world as the Emperor does over 
the living population of the Empire. 

As a religion, Buddhism seems to enjoy more of the 
popular favor than Taoism ; though the former professes 
to draw men away from the world and its vanities, while 
the latter proffers the blessings of health, wealth, and 
long life. 

It is rare that we find a Buddhist temple of any con- 
siderable reputation that is not situated in a locality dis- 
tinguished for some feature of its natural scenery. One 
situated in the midst of a dusty plain, not far from the 
gates of Tientsin, seemed to us, when we first visited it, 
to present an exception to the general rule. Subsequently, 
however, a brilliant mirage, which we frequently saw as 
we approached the temple, furnished us at once with the 
explanation of its location and its name. It is called the 
temple of the *' Sea of Light ; " and its founders, no doubt, 
placed it there in order that the deceptive mirage, which 
is always visible in bright sunny weather, might serve its 
contemplative inmates as a memento of the chief tenet of 
their philosophy — that all things are unreal, and human 
life itself a shifting phantasmagoria of empty shadows. 

Sequestered valleys enclosed by mountain-peaks, and 
elevated far above the world which they profess to de- 

* This is not quite true of the present High-priest, who is so 
reduced in circumstances that he sometimes leaves his residence 
in the Lung Hu mountains to raise money in wealthier regions. 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 185 

spise, are favorite seats for the monastic communities of 
Buddhism. But it is no yearning after God that leads 
them to court retirement; nor is it the adoration of na- 
ture's Author that prompts them to place their shrines in 
the midst of His sublimest works. To them the universe 
is a vacuum, and emptiness the highest object of con- 
templation. 

They are a strange paradox — religious atheists ! Ac- 
knowledging no First Cause or Conscious Ruling Power, 
they hold that the human soul revolves perpetually in the 
urn of fate, Hable to endless ills, and enjoying no real 
good. As it cannot cease to be, its only resource against 
this state of interminable misery is the extinction of con- 
sciousness — a remedy which lies within itself, and which 
they endeavour to attain by ascetic exercises. 

Their daily prayers consist of endless repetitions, which 
are not expected to be heard by the unconscious deity to 
whom they are addressed, but are confessedly designed 
merely to exert a reflex influence on the worshipper — i. e., 
to occupy the mind with empty sounds and withdraw it 
from thought and feeling. Ta Ma, one of their saints, is 
said thus to have sat motionless for nine years with his 
face to the wall ; not engaged, as a German would con- 
jecture, in ** thinking the wall," but occupied with the 
more difficult task of thinking nothing at all. 

Those in whom the discipline is complete are believed 
to have entered the Nirvana — not an Elysium of con- 
scious enjoyment, but a negative state of exemption from 
pain. Such is the condition of all the Buddhas, who, 
though the name is taken to signify supreme intelligence, 
are reduced to an empty abstraction in a state which is 
described as pu sheng pii mieh " neither life nor death; " 
and such is the aspiration of all their votaries. Melan- 
choly spectacle ! Men of acute minds, bewildered in the 



1 86 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

maze of their own speculations, and seeking to attain 
perfection by stripping themselves of the highest attri- 
butes of humanity ! 

As a philosophy, Buddhism resembles Stoicism in de- 
riving its leading motive from the fear of evil. But 
while the latter encased itself in panoply, and, standing 
in martial attitude, defied the world to spoil the treasures 
laid up in its bosom, the former seeks security by empty- 
ing the soul of its susceptibilities and leaving nothing that 
is capable of being harmed or lost — i. e., treating the soul 
as Epictetus is said to have done his dwelling-house, in 
order that he might not be annoyed by the visits of 
thieves. It dries up the sources of life, wraps the soul 
in the cerements of tlie grave, and aims to convert a 
living being into a spiritual mummy which shall survive 
all changes without being affected by them. 

This is the spirit and these the principles of esoteric 
Buddhism as enunciated by those members of the inner 
circle whose wan cheeks and sunken, rayless eyes indicate 
that they are far advanced in the process of self-annihila- 
tion. In their external manifestations they vary with 
different schools and countries, the lamas of Tartary and 
the sarmanas of Ceylon appearing to have little in 
common. 

To adapt itself to the comprehension of the masses, 
Buddhism has personified its abstract conceptions and 
converted them into divinities ; while, to pave the way 
for its easier introduction, it readily embraces the gods 
and heroes of each country in its comprehensive pantheon. 

In China the Nirvana was found to be too subtle an 
idea for popular contemplation, and, in order to furnish 
the people with a more attractive object of worship than 
an unconscious deity, the Buddhists brought forward a 
Goddess of Mercy, whose special merit was that, having 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 187 

reached the verge of Nirvana, she declined to enter, pre- 
ferring to remain where she could hear the cries and suc- 
cor the calamities of those who were struggling with the 
manifold evils of a world of change. From this circum- 
stance she is called the Ts'e Pei Kuan Yin, the *' Merciful 
Hearer of Prayers " of men. 

This winning attribute meets a want of humanity, and 
makes her a favorite among the votaries of the faith. 
While the Three Buddhas hold a more prominent posi- 
tion in the temple, she occupies the first place in the 
hearts of their worshippers. Temples of a secondary 
class are often devoted especially to her; and in the 
greater ones she almost always finds a shrine or corner 
where she is represented with a thousand hands ready to 
succor human suffering, or holding in her arms a beauti- 
ful infant, ready to confer the blessing of offspring on her 
faithful worshippers — in this last attribute resembling 
the favorite object of popular worship in papal countries. 
From which, indeed, there is reason to beHeve she was 
derived. 

In the Sea-light Monastery above referred to, she ap- 
pears in a large side hall, habited in a cloak, her head en- 
circled by an inscription in gilded characters which pro- 
claims her as the '* Goddess whose favor protects the 
second birth." This language seems to express a Chris- 
tian thought; but in reality nothing could be more in- 
tensely pagan. It relates to the transmigration of souls, 
which is the fundamental doctrine of the system ; and in- 
forms the visitor that this is the divinity to whom he is 
to look for protection in passing through the successive 
changes of his future existence. 

Within the mazes of that mighty labyrinth, there is 
room for every condition of life on earth, and for purga- 
tories and paradises innumerable besides. Beyond these 



i88 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the common Buddhist never looks. To earn by works 
of merit — which play an important part in the modified 
system — the reversion of a comfortable mandarinate, or 
a place in the *' Paradise of the Western Sky," bounds 
his aspirations. And to escape from having their souls 
pounded in a spiritual mortar, or ground between spiritual 
millstones in Hades; or avoid the doom of dwelling in 
the body of a brute on earth, constitutes with the ignor- 
ant the strongest motive to deter them from vice — those 
and a thousand other penalties being set forth by pictures 
and rude casts to impress the minds of such as are unable 
to read. 

Buddhism was little known in China prior to A. d., 66. 
During an eclipse of Confucianism that lasted two cen- 
turies — caused by its proscription, on political grounds, 
the Emperor Ming Ti sent an embassy to invite priests 
from India, and the triad of religions was completed. 
He is said to have been prompted to this by a remarkable 
dream. He had seen, he said to his courtiers, a man of 
gold, holding in his hand a bow and two arrows. They, 
recognizing in these objects the elements of Fo — the 
name of Buddha as it is written in the Chinese language 
— expounded the dream as an intimation that the Bud- 
dhist religion ought to be introduced. The story of the 
dream is evidently of later growth, but it is interesting 
to speculate as to what the condition of China might 
have been if the ambassadors, instead of stopping in In- 
dia, had proceeded to Palestine. As it is, the success of 
Buddhism demonstrates the possibility of a foreign faith 
taking root in the soil of China. 

The San Chiao, or Three Religions, have now passed in 
revision. We have viewed them, however, owing to the 
limits of our space, only in outline, neither allowing our- 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 189 

selves, on the one hand, to follow up those superstitious 
practices which attach themselves to the several schools 
like the moss and ivy that festoon the boughs of aged 
trees, nor, on the other, to enter into a minute investiga- 
tion of those systems of philosophy in which they have 
their root. The fact that each takes its rise in a school 
of philosophy is significant of the tendencies of human 
thought. 

The Confucian philosophy in its prominent character- 
istics is ethical, occupying itself mainly with social re- 
lations and civil duties, shunning studiously all questions 
that enter into ontological subtleties or partake of the 
marvelous and the supernatural. 

The philosophy of Tao as developed by the followers 
of Laotze, if not in the form in which it was left by 
their master, may be characterized as physical. For the 
individual it prescribed a physical discipline; and, with- 
out any conception of true science, it was filled with the 
idea of inexhaustible resources, hidden in the elements 
of material nature. 

The Buddhist philosophy is pre-eminently metaphy- 
sical. Originating with a people who, far more than the 
Chinese, are addicted to abstruse speculations, it occu- 
pied itself with subtle inquiries into the nature and facul- 
ties of the human mind, the veracity of its perceptions, 
and the grounds of our delusive faith in the independent 
existence of an external world. 

These three philosophies, differing thus widely in their 
essential character — one being thoroughly material, an- 
other purely ideal, and the third repudiating all such 
questions and holding itself neutral and indifferent — yet 
exhibit some remarkable points of agreement. They 
agree in the original omission or negation of religious 



igo THE LORE OF CATHAY 

ideas ; and they coincide no less remarkably in evolving 
each, from its negative basis, a system of religion ; and 
in contributing each its quota to the popular idolatry. 

Confucius " seldom spoke of the divinities," and 
taught his disciples to " keep them at a distance ; " and 
yet the forms of respect which he enjoined for deceased 
ancestors led to their virtual deification, and promoted, 
if it did not originate, the national hero-worship. Like 
Comte the modern apostle of positivism, who professed 
to occupy himself wholly with positive ideas, he was 
unable to satisfy the cravings of his spiritual nature with- 
out having recourse to a religion of humanity. 

The Buddhist creed denies alike the reality of the ma- 
terial world and the existence of an overruling mind ; yet 
it has peopled an ideal universe with a race of ideal gods, 
all of whom are entities in the belief of the vulgar. 

The Taoist creed acknowledges no such category as 
that of spirit in contradistinction from matter ; yet it 
swarms heaven and earth with tutelar spirits whom the 
people regard as divine. 

We see here a process directly the reverse of that which 
certain writers of modern Europe assert to be the natural 
progress of the human mind. According to them, men 
set out with the belief of many gods, whom they at length 
reduce to unity, and finally supersede by recognizing the 
laws of nature as independent of a personal administrator. 
The worship of one God is the oldest recorded form of 
Chinese religion, and idolatry is an innovation. Even 
now new idols are constantly taking their place in the 
national pantheon ; and so strong is the tendency in this 
direction that in every case where philosophy has laid the 
foundation, idolatry has come in to complete the structure. 

It is incorrect to assert that any one of the San Chiao 
is a State religion to the exclusion of the others, though 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 191 

the Confucian is sometimes so regarded on account of its 
greater influence with the ruHng classes and its marked 
prominence in connection with State ceremonials. Not 
only are they all recognized and tolerated, but they all 
share the Imperial patronage. The shrines of each of the 
Three Religions are often erected by Imperial munificence, 
and their priests and sacred rites provided for at the Im- 
perial expense with impartial liberality. 

Not only do they co-exist without conflict in the Em- 
pire, but they exercise a joint sway over almost every 
mind in its immense population. It is impossible to ap- 
portion the people among these several creeds. They are 
all Confucians, all Buddhists, all Taoists. They all rever- 
ence Confucius and worship their ancestors — all partici- 
pate in the " feast of hungry ghosts," and employ the 
Buddhist burial-service; and all resort to the magical 
devices of the Taoists to protect themselves against the 
assaults of evil spirits, or secure " good luck " in busi- 
ness. They celebrate their marriages according to the 
Confucian rites; in building their houses, they ask the 
advice of a Taoist; and in cases of alarming illness em- 
ploy him to exorcise evil spirits. At death they commit 
their souls to the keeping of the Buddhists. The people 
assert, and with truth, that these religions, originally 
three, have become one ; and they are accustomed to sym- 
bolize this unity by erecting San Chiao Vang, Temples of 
the Three Religions, in which Confucius and Laotze ap- 
pear on the right and left of Buddha, as forming a triad of 
sages. This arrangement, however, gives great offense 
to some of the more zealous disciples of Confucius; and 
a few years ago a memorial was presented to the Em- 
peror, prayiujg him to demolish the San Chiao T'ang, 
which stood near the tomb of their great teacher, who has 
*' no equal but Heaven." 



192 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

The effects of this coalition may be traced in their litera- 
ture as well as in the manners and customs of the people. 
Of this, one example will suffice, though we might go on, 
if space permitted, to show how freely the later works of 
each school appropriate the phraseology of the others, 
and to point out the extent to which the general language 
of the country has been enriched by a vocabulary of relig- 
ious terms, chiefly of Buddhist origin, all of which are 
incorporated in the Imperial Dictionary and pass as cur- 
rent coin in the halls of the literar>^ tribunal. 

In the Liao Chai, a collection of tales, there is a story 
which owes its humor to the bizarre intermixture of ele- 
ments from each of the Three Religions. 

A young nobleman, riding out, hawk in hand, is thrown 
from his horse and taken up for dead. On being con- 
veyed to his house, he opens his eyes and gradually re- 
covers his bodily strength ; but, to the grief of his family, 
he is hopelessly insane. He fancies himself a Buddhist 
priest, repels the caresses of the ladies of his harem, and 
insists on being conveyed to a distant province, where he 
affirms he has passed his life in a monastery. On arriv- 
ing he proves himself to be the abbot; and the mystery 
of his transfiguration is at once solved. 

He had led a dissolute life, and his flimsy soul, unable 
to sustain the shock of death, was at once dissipated. The 
soul of a priest who had just expired happened to be float- 
ing by, and, led by that desire to inhabit a body which 
some say impelled the devils to enter the herd of swine, 
it took possession of the still warm corpse. 

The young nobleman was a Confucian of the modern 
type. The idea of the soul changing its earthly tenement 
is Buddhistic. And that which rendered the metamor- 
phosis possible, without waiting for another birth, was 
the Taoist doctrine that the soul is dissolved with the 



l^HREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 193 

body, unless it be purified and concentrated by vigorous 
discipline. 

It is curious to inquire on what principles this recon- 
ciliation has been effected. Have the three creeds 
mingled together like the three gases in the atmosphere, 
each contributing some ingredient to the composition of a 
vital fluid ; or blended like the three primary colors of the 
spectrum, imparting their own hues in varying propor- 
tions ; but all present at every point ? It is not a healthy 
atmosphere that supplies the breath of the new-born soul 
in China ; not a pure and steady light that meets its open- 
ing eyes. Yet each of these systems meets a want; and 
the whole, taken together, supplies the cravings of nature 
as well perhaps as any creed not derived from a divine 
revelation. 

The Three Religions are not, as the natives thought- 
lessly assume, identical in signification and differing only 
in their mode of expression. As we have already seen, it 
is hardly possible to conceive of three creeds more totally 
distinct or radically antagonistic ; and yet, to a certain 
extent, they are supplementary. And to this it is that they 
owe their union and their permanence. 

Confucius gave his people an elaborate theory of their 
social organization and civil polity ; but when they looked 
abroad on nature with its unsolved problems, they were 
unable to confine their thoughts within the limits of his 
cautious positivism. They were fascinated by mystery, 
and felt that in nature there were elements of the super- 
natural which they could not ignore, even if they did not 
understand them. Hence the rise of Taoism, captivating 
the imagination by its hierarchy of spirits and personified 
powers, and meeting, in some degree, the longing for a 
future life by maintaining, though under hard conditions^ 
the possible achievement of a corporeal immortality. 



194 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

With the momentous question of existence suspended on 
this bare possibility, Buddhism came to them hke an evan- 
gel of hope, assuring every man of an inalienable interest 
in a life to come. It gave them a better psychology of the 
human mind than they had before possessed; afforded a 
plausible explanation of the inequalities in the condition 
of men; and, by the theory of metempsychosis, seemed to 
reveal the link that connects man with the lower animals, 
on the one hand, and with the gods, on the other. No 
wonder it excited the popular mind to a pitch of enthusi- 
asm, and provoked the adherents of the other creeds to 
virulent opposition. 

Taoism, as opposed to it, became more decidedly mate- 
rial, and Confucianism more positively atheistic. The dis- 
ciples of the latter especially assailed it with acrimonious 
controversy — denying, though they had hitherto been 
silent on such questions, the personality of God and the 
future life of the human soul. 

Now, however, the effervescence of passion has died 
away — the antagonistic elements have long since neutra- 
lized each other, and the three creeds have subsided into a 
stable equilibrium, or rather become compacted into a firm 
conglomerate. The ethical, the physical, and the meta- 
physical live together in harmony. The school that denies 
the existence of matter, that which occupies itself wholly 
with the properties of matter, and that, again, which de- 
nounces the subtleties of both and builds on ethics, have 
ceased their controversies. One deriving its motive from 
the fear of death, another actuated by a dread of the evils 
attendant on human life, and the third absorbed in the 
present and indifferent alike to hope or fear, all are ac- 
cepted with equal faith by an unreasoning populace. 
Without perceiving their points of discrepancy, or under- 
standing the manner in which they supplement each other, 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 195 

they accept each as answering to certain cravings of their 
inward nature, and blend them all in a huge heterogene- 
ous and incongruous creed. It may help to reconcile ap- 
parently contradictory statements to remember that each 
of the three systems appears under a twofold aspect — first 
as an esoteric philosophy, afterwards as a popular religion. 
Thus a chief object of the Buddhist discipline was the 
extinction of consciousness. Yet the Chinese embraced it 
as their best assurance of a future life. What the philoso- 
pher was anxious to cast away, the populace were eager 
to possess. 

It would be interesting to inquire, had we sufficient 
space, what have been the intellectual and moral influ- 
ences of these several systems, separate and combined. 
They have, it is true, given rise to various forms of de- 
grading superstition, and, supporting instead of destroy- 
ing each other, they bind the mind of the nation in three- 
fold fetters; still, we are inclined to think that each has 
served a useful purpose in the long education of the 
Chinese people, and that each represents a distinct stage 
in the progress of religious thought. Buddhism vastly en- 
larged their religious conceptions. Their ideas, to borrow 
a mathematical illustration, were limited, prior to the in- 
troduction of Buddhism, to two dimensions, — to some- 
thing that may be described as a " flat-land," with length 
and breadth, but no height. Buddhism gave it height, 
soaring up to the heavens and developing a view of the 
universe, the grandeur of which, perhaps, nothing can 
exceed. Is it possible that, after this universe of three 
dimensions, we shall have one of four dimensions ? There 
is, in my view, room for the fourth dimension, or (to 
drop the figure) there is room for a fourth stage in the 
progression, — one which China is waiting for. Christi- 
anity alone can supply the defects of all the systems, and 



196 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

present one harmonious unity. They are now offered a 
better faith — one which is consistent with itself and ade- 
quate to satisfy all their spiritual necessities. Will they 
receive it? The habit of receiving such contradictory 
systems has rendered their minds almost incapable of 
weighing evidence; and they never ask concerning a re- 
ligion '* is it true ? " but '' is it good ? " Christianity, how- 
ever, with its exclusive and peremptory claims, has already 
begun to arouse their attention ; and when the spirit of 
inquiry is once thoroughly awakened, the San Chiao, or 
Three Creeds, will not long sustain the ordeal. 



NOTE I 

THE EMPEROR AT THE ALTAR OF HEAVEN 

THE Roman Emperors always associated with their 
other titles that of Pontifex Maximus; and the 
Sovereigns of China have from time immemorial 
acted as High Priests of the empire. 

It was in that capacity that His Majesty Kuang Hsii 
officiated at the Temple of Heaven on the 22nd December, 
1887, for the first time, on the occasion of the solstitial 
sacrifices. On the previous day, he proceeded to the 
Temple with great pomp, accompanied by the grandees of 
the Court, three elephants harnessed to as many chariots 
appearing in the procession. Having prepared himself 
by a night spent in fasting and meditation to approach 
the presence of the King of Kings, he prostrated himself 
nine times before a tablet inscribed with the name of 
Shang Ti, and offered an ox, the bones of the victim being 
consumed in a furnace. 

As to the herd of common gods, the Emperor can make 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 197 

and unmake them at will. He even assumes to decide 
whether a living Buddha shall or shall not have the privi- 
lege of re-appearing in another body ; but in the presence 
of Shang Ti, the master of China's millions abases him- 
self in the dust, and confesses himself a subject of law. 

When the Taiping rebellion was at its height in 1853, 
the Emperor Hsien Feng repaired to the Altar of Heaven, 
confessed his sins, and implored on behalf of his suffering 
people the compassion of the Sovereign of the Universe. 
By this act, he acknowledged that he ruled by delegated 
authority, and that he was answerable for its proper use. 

The same idea is impressively set forth by a row of 
iron censers, ranged around the foot of the altar. In 
these, it is not strips of mimic gold that are consumed, 
nor sticks of incense, but long lists of the names of crim- 
inals condemned to death, the smoke and flame rising up 
to Heaven, appealing for ratification or redress to the 
Supreme Court of the Universe. 

The Emperor is a monotheist, because there is only one 
God sufficiently exalted to be to him an object of worship 
in the highest sense ; for, though he does worship at the 
shrines of other divinities, to none but Shang Ti does 
he employ the humble style of a servant, and he, if not the 
only worshipper of Shang Ti, is the only one who is per- 
mitted to make use of the prescribed ritual. For any one 
else to presume to imitate that ritual would be an act of 
high treason, as it could have but one meaning, — that of 
an intention to usurp the prerogatives and to seize the 
throne of the sovereign. The only instance of this which 
we have on record — except in cases of overt rebellion — 
is that of the Prince of Ch'in erecting an altar to Shang 
Ti, some 2,500 years ago. The act betokened a disposi- 
tion on his part to seize the falling crown of the Chous, — 
which one of his descendants actually accomplished. The 



198 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Chou Emperor in the meantime tolerated the abuse, be- 
cause he lacked the power to punish so great a vassal. 

The antiquity of this Imperial rite is not the least in- 
teresting of its features. It goes back to the first of the 
Three Dynasties, to a date when Melchisedek combined 
with his kingly office that of '' Priest of the Most High 
God." In that day, there was no Buddhism, no Taoism ; 
but, whether that primitive worship connects itself with a 
purer form of partriarchal faith, or whether, as Emerson 
expresses it — 

** Up from the heart of nature came. 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame "— 

I shall not undertake to determine. 

The idea of the offerings on this occasion is that of a 
banquet, in which the spirit of the Supreme condescends 
to accept entertainment at the hand of a mortal. He is 
accompanied by eight imperial guests, — the ancestors of 
the officiating sovereign, — who, like Wen Wang in the 
Book of Odes, are regarded as favored guests in the 
Court of Heaven. 

The august pageant is withheld from eyes profane ; and 
01 course all foreigners in Peking are officially invited to 
be absent. 

I do not, accordingly, profess to give you the observa- 
tions of an eye-witness ; though I have perhaps as good a 
right to do so as certain war correspondents have had, 
to depict a battle-scene, when they have viewed the smoke 
at a distance. I have seen the altar; and I have at this 
moment the ritual of the day before my eyes. But it 
would not add much to the interest of my readers to have 
a libretto of the nine pieces of sacred music, or an in- 
ventory of the subordinate offerings which accompany 
the Fan Niii, or ox of burnt sacrifice. 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 199 
NOTE II 



THE Peking Gazette corvi2ims the following obituary 
announcement, in the usual form of an Imperial 
decree : " The Duke K'ung Hsiang K'o, lineal 
successor of the Holy Sage, has departed this life. Let 
the proper Board report as to the marks of Imperial favor 
to be accorded in connection with the funeral rites." 

The Duke was about twenty-six years of age, and a 
descendant of Confucius at a remove of more than sev- 
enty generations. The last on the family record published 
in the last century was the seventy-first. Of his personal 
character we know nothing, save that he once admitted a 
company of foreigners, the Rev. Dr. Williamson and 
others, into his presence, and treated them with great 
urbanity. What interests us more, and furnishes the sole 
reason for chronicling his death, whether in these lines 
or in the still briefer notice in the Peking Gazette, is his 
representative character. K'ung Hsiang K'o was head of 
the Confucian clan, and as such he enjoyed the dignities 
and emoluments of a noble of the first class. 

Hereditary rank makes so small a figure in the ad- 
ministration of the Chinese government that we some- 
times hear it asserted that there is no such thing in China. 
Now, those who hazard this assertion, not only leave out 
of view the feudal organization of the Manchu and Mon- 
gol races, but forget the sonorous titles prefixed to the 
names of some of the leading Chinese statesmen of the 
present day. We can scarcely take up a number of the 
Peking Gazette without being reminded that Li Hung 
Chang is an earl, of the first grade ; and a few years ago 



200 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the title of marquis, was made equally prominent in con- 
nection with the name of the late eminent Tseng Kuo Fan 
and his equally distinguished son. In a word, all the 
five degrees of hereditary nobility which were in use three 
thousand years ago are to be found (by searching) among 
the Chinese of to-day ; but with this important difference, 
that they no longer imply the possession of landed estates 
or territorial jurisdiction. Leaving the secular peerage 
of China proper, as well as that of the dominant race, to 
be treated by some one who has leisure and inclination for 
the subject, we propose to devote a few paragraphs to 
what we venture to denominate the sacred heraldry of the 
Empire. 

Many years ago, in the course of an overland journey 
from Peking to Shanghai, the writer turned aside to visit 
the tomb of Confucius. It was an impressive spectacle to 
see the heads of the various branches into which the clan 
is divided performing their semi-monthly devotions be- 
fore the tablet of their illustrious ancestor. Many of these 
discharge official duties, and constitute a kind of priest- 
hood in the temple of the Sage; their appointments, 
whether hereditary or otherwise, are duly recorded in the 
Red Book, or official register. The chief of the tribe is 
known as Yen Sheng Kiing, the Duke of the Holy Suc- 
cession — a succession which is older in generations than 
most aged men are in the reckoning of years. There 
are Jewish families who can boast a longer pedigree — 
running back, perhaps, to the return from captivity, b. c. 
536; but where, out of China, shall we look for a family 
whose nobility has a history of twenty centuries ? 

The first hereditary distinction was conferred on the 
senior member of the house of K'ung by the founder of 
the Han dynasty, b. c. 202. The title was at first the 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 201 

vague designation of chiin, prince, and coupled with the 
charge of the ancestral temple. This was exchanged for 
the more distinguishing title of hou, marquis, by order 
of Wu Ti, of the same dynasty. The later Chou, a. d. 
550, substituted the title of Kung, duke ; but in the next 
dynasty, that of Sui, it reverted to marquis, and so con- 
tinued through the three centuries of the T'angs. At the 
accession of the Sung, the heir of Confucius was again 
raised to the dignity of duke — a rank which he has re- 
tained without material variation for more than eight 
centuries. 

In the topographical and genealogical histories we are 
favored with biographical sketches of the individual links 
in this long chain; but through them all there runs a 
thread of dreary monotony. In earlier ages, the house 
of K'ung did indeed produce a few men of exceptional 
eminence in letters and in politics. They are not, how- 
ever, always found in the line of primogeniture, and, in 
the rare instances in which titled heads have distinguished 
themselves, we have to recognize the stimulating influence 
of court life, from which they were not yet excluded. 

Under the existing regime, the succession presents us 
no name of note; a result more due to want of oppor- 
tunity than to any deterioration of race, for, according 
to some observers, the blood of Confucius continues to 
assert itself in the superior development of his posterity. 
But what are we to expect when a family is rooted to 
the soil of a cemetery but that it should become as barren 
as the cypress that overhangs it? 

The Dukes of K'ung are strictly relegated to the vicinity 
of their sacerdotal charge, and are not at liberty to visit 
the capital without express permission from the throne. 

We recall the late Duke's application for leave to pros- 



202 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

trate himself before the sarcophagus of the Emperor 
Tung Chih, certainly the last and probably the only oc- 
casion on which he ever entered the walls of Peking. 

The family estate, it must be confessed, is large enough 
to gratify the ambition and employ the energies of an 
ordinary mortal, amounting (for it is not all in one 
place) to an area of not less than 165,000 acres. 

And as for honors, the country nobleman has much 
to console him for the privations of provincial life; the 
Governor of the province, it is said, being required to 
approach him with the same forms of homage which he 
renders to the Son of Heaven. Numerous offices of in- 
ferior dignity are conferred on other members of the 
clan, constituting it a kind of Levitical order; but it is 
pleasing to remark that these tokens of a nation's undy- 
ing gratitude are not limited to the lineage of Confucius. 
Around the grand luminary there moved a cluster of 
satellites, which drank in his beams and propagated his 
light. 

The chief of these Yen, Tseng, Sze, Meng,. as the 
Chinese concisely call them, and a few others, continued 
to be honored in the same way, though not to the same 
degree, as the Sage himself. Inseparable attendants of 
the Sage, in all his temples, at least one of which exists 
in every district of the Empire, each of them enjoys the 
honor of a separate shrine, and some of his posterity de- 
rive their subsistence from the charge of it. In the city 
of Chii Fu, a conspicuous inscription points out the spot 
where Yen Hui, in the midst of poverty, presented a 
face ever radiant with joy, because his soul was filled 
with divine philosophy. Hard by stands a magnificent 
mausoleum to the man who never wrote a book and never 
performed any great exploit; but who embodied in his 
own practice more perfectly than any other the precepts 



THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 203 

of his Master. In the adjoining district of Tsou Hsien 
stands a temple to Mencius, the St. Paul of Confucianism, 
who, though he entered the world too late to enjoy the 
personal teachings of the Great Sage, did more than any 
other to give them shape and currency. Not far away, 
in the same city, stands a somewhat dilapidated temple of 
T'ze Sze, the master of Mencius, and the grandson of 
Confucius. Though in the direct line, the Chinese have 
not been willing to merge his name and fame in those 
of his ancestor; but have taken effectual measures for 
testifying to all generations their reverence for the author 
of the Chung Yung, or '' Golden Mean." 

The whole region surrounding the temple of Confucius 
is dotted over by the tombs of ancient worthies ; and it is 
touching to see with what sacred care their descendants 
cherish the fire on their altars. Under various designa- 
tions they have discharged these offices for more than 
seventy, and in one instance for nearly a hundred, genera- 
tions ; but their present titles date from the Ming dynasty. 
The founder of the Mings, an unlettered warrior, who 
never read the Four Books until he was seated on the 
throne and had Liu Chi for a teacher, conferred certain 
honors on the descendants of Yen Hui and Mencius. 
His successors ordered that representatives of fifteen of 
the disciples of Confucius should be enrolled in the Hanlin 
College, and invested with the office of professors and 
curators of the Five Classics. 

Nor is it only the Great Sage and his disciples who 
enjoy the distinction of a memorial temple, a State ritual, 
and an hereditary priesthood ; all these are accorded to the 
Duke of Chou, whom Confucius revered as a master and 
imitated as a model. Chou Kung died more than five 
hundred years before the birth of Confucius; but the 
later Sage not only professed to have caught his inspira- 



204 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tion from the earlier, but in one of his most touching 
speeches he gave it as a mark of decaying nature that 
he had " ceased to dream of Chou Kung.'* 

It is not surprising, therefore, that the family of the 
virtuous Regent of China's typical dynasty should have 
some small part in the cloud of incense which China offers 
to the pioneers of her civilization. Their claim to it was 
eloquently advocated by one of his descendants when the 
Emperor Kang Hsi visited the " sacred soil of Lu," and 
promptly recognized by that enlightened monarch. None 
of these venerated shades is regarded as exercising a 
tutelar guardianship over the Empire, or over any part 
of it. Their temples, though vulgar superstitions have 
gathered round them, are essentially memorial, and the 
worship wholly commemorative. It is thus that China 
has sought to mould her children into one family and to 
secure the stability of society by binding it to the tradi- 
tions of the past. 

The representatives of these families, as we have said, 
are a priesthood rather than a nobility ; but so closely are 
the two ideas associated in the Chinese mind that a writer 
of these family histories finds in ancestral worship the 
origin of feudal dignities. His philosophy is at fault; 
but it is gratifying to observe that, while the feudal lords 
of China have gone under in the struggle for existence, 
the only vestiges of the ancient nobility (the secular are 
all new) are those which cluster round the memories of 
the wise and good. 



xir 

/ 4 

THE ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHINESE 



WIDELY as the Chinese have departed from the 
meagre outhne of a rehgious system left them 
by Confucius, they have generally adhered to 
his moral teachings. Developed by his followers, re- 
ceived by the suffrages of the whole people, and enforced 
by the sanctions of the Three Religions, the principles 
which he inculcated may be said to have moulded the 
social life of nearly one-third of the human family. These 
are nowhere to be found digested into a scientific form, 
but diffused through the mingled masses of physics and 
metaphysics which compose the Hsing Li Ta Chiian, En- 
cyclopaedia of Philosophy, or sparkling in the detached 
apothegms of '' The Sages." Happily for our convenience 
we have them brought to a focus in the chart, a translation 
of which is given below. 

We shall confine ourselves to the task of explaining this 
important document, as the best method of exhibiting 
the system in its practical influence ; though an independ- 
ent view might afford freer scope for discussing its prin- 
ciples. 

This chart is anonymous ; but the want of a name de- 
tracts nothing from its value. The author has no merit 
beyond the idea of presenting;- the subject in a tabular 
view, and the pictorial taste with which he has executed 
the design. Of the ethical system so exhibited he origi- 
nated nothing; and the popularity of his work is due 

205 



2o6 THE LORE OF CATPIAY 

mainly to the fact that it is regarded as a faithful synopsis 
of the Confucian morals. 

The half-illuminated sphere prefixed to the chart is a 
mere embellishment having scarcely more connection with 
its subject-matter than the royal coat-of-arms stamped 
on the title-page of some editions has with the contents 
of King James's Bible. It represents the mundane egg, 
or mass of chaotic matter, containing Yin and Yang, the 
seminal principles from whose action and reaction all 
things were evolved. 

Part I. is an epitome of the Ta Hsilch, the first of the 
four chief canonical books of the Chinese, and the most 
admired production of their great philosopher. 

Voluminous as an editor, piously embalming the relics 
of antiquity, Confucius occupies but a small space as an 
author; a slender compend of history and this little tract 
of a few hundred words being the only original works 
which emanated from his own pen. The latter, the title 
of which signifies the " Great Study," is prized so highly 
for the elegance of its style and the depth of its wisdom 
that it may often be seen inscribed in letters of gold, and 
suspended as an ornamental tableau in the mansions of 
the rich. It treats of the Practice of Virtue and the Art 
of Government; and in the following table these two 
subjects are arranged in parallel columns. In the first 
we have the lineaments of a perfect character superscribed 
by the word Sheng, a " Holy Sage," the name which the 
Chinese give to their ideal. In the other we have a cata- 
logue of the social virtues as they spread in widening 
circles through the family, the neighborhood, the State, 
and the world. These are ranged under Wang, the " Em- 
peror," whose duty it is to cherish them in his subjects, 
the force of example being his chief instrument, and the 
cultivation of personal virtue his first obligation. The 



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ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 211 

passage which is here analyzed, and which constitutes the 
foundation of the whole treatise, is the following: 

'' Those ancient princes who desired to promote the 
practice of virtue throughout the world first took care to 
govern their own states. In order to govern their states, 
they first regulated their own families. In order to regu- 
late their families, they first practiced virtue in their own 
persons. In order to the practice of personal virtue, they 
first cultivated right feeling. In order to insure right 
feeling, they first had sincerity of purpose. In order to 
secure sincerity of purpose, they extended their knowl- 
edge. Knowledge is enlarged by inquiring into the na- 
ture of things." 

This converging series is beautiful. However widely 
the branches may extend, the quality of their fruit is de- 
termined by the common root. Virtue in the State depends 
on virtue in the family, that of the family on that of 
the individual ; and individual virtue depends not only on 
right feelings and proper motives, but, as a last condi- 
tion, on right knowledge. Nor is there anything in which 
Confucius more strikingly exhibits the clearness of his 
perceptions than in indicating the direction in which this 
indispensable intelligence is to be sought — viz., in the 
nature of things; in understanding the relations which 
the individual sustains to society and the universe. The 
knowledge of these is truth, conformity to them is virtue ; 
and moral obligations, Confucius appears, with Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, to have derived from a perception of these 
relations, and a sense of inherent fitness in the nature of 
things. Just at this point we have a notable hiatus. The 
editor tells us the chapter on the '' Study of Nature " is 
wanting; and Chinese scholars have never ceased to de- 
plore its loss. 

But whatever of value to the student of virtue it may 



212 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

have contained, it certainly did not contain the " begin- 
ning of wisdom." For skilfully as Confucius had woven 
the chain of human relationships, he failed to connect the 
last link with Heaven to point out the highest class of 
our relations. Not only, therefore, is one grand division 
of our duties a blank in his system, but it is destitute 
of that higher light and those stronger motives which 
are necessary to stimulate to the performance of the most 
familiar offices. 

A young mandarin who once said to me, in answer to 
a question as to his object in life, that " he was desirous of 
performing all his duties to God and man," was not 
speaking in the language of the Confucian school. He 
had been taught in a mission school and discovered a new 
world in our moral relations which was unknown to the 
ancient philosopher. 

The principal relations of the individual to society are 
copiously illustrated in this and the other classics. They 
are five — the governmental, parental, conjugal, fraternal, 
and that of friendship. The first is the comprehensive 
subject of the treatise; and in the second column of the 
chart all the others are placed subordinate to it. The 
last comprehends the principles which regulate general 
intercourse. Conjugal fidelity, in the sense of chastity, 
is made obligatory only on the female. Fraternal duty 
requires a rigid subordination, according to the gradation 
of age, which is aided by a peculiarity of language ; each 
elder brother being called hsiung, and each younger ti; no 
common designation, like that of '' brother," placing them 
on equal footing. This arrangement in the family Con- 
fucius pronounces a discipline, in which respect is taught 
for superiors in civil life; and filial piety, he adds, is a 
sentiment which a son who has imbibed it at home will 
carry into the service of his prince. 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 213 

Nothing, in fact, is more characteristic of Chinese so- 
ciety than the scope given to fiHal piety. Intensified into 
a rehgious sentiment by the worship which he renders to 
his ancestors, it leads the dutiful son to live and act in all 
situations with reference to his parents. He seeks repu- 
tation for the sake of reflecting honor upon them, and 
dreads disgrace chiefly through fear of bringing reproach 
on their name. An unkindness to a relative is a sin 
against them, in forgetting the ties of a common ancestry ; 
and even a violation of the law derives its turpitude 
from exposing the parents of the offender to suffer with 
him, in person or in reputation. It is thus analogous in 
the universality of its application to the incentive which 
the Christian derives from his relation to the *' Father 
of spirits ; " and if inferior in its efficacy, it is yet tar 
more efficacious than any which a pagan religion is 
capable of supplying. Its various bearings are beautifully 
traced by Confucius in a discourse which constitutes one 
of the favorite text-books in the schools of China. 

It is not the book, but the art of governing thus founded 
on the practice of virtue, that is emphatically denomi- 
nated the '' Great Study ; " and this designation, express- 
ing, as it does, the judgment of one from whose authority 
there is no appeal, has contributed to give ethics a de- 
cided preponderance among the studies of the Chinese. 
Other sciences, in their estimation, may be interesting as 
sources of intellectual diversion or useful in a subordinate 
degree, as promotive of material prosperity; but this is 
the science, whose knowledge is wisdom, whose practice 
is virtue, whose result is happiness. In the literary ex- 
aminations, the grand object of which is the selection of 
men who are qualified for the service of the government, 
an acquaintance with subjects of this kind contributes 
more to official promotion than all other intellectual ac- 



214 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

quirements ; and when the aspirant for honors has reached 
the summit of the scale, and become a member of the 
Privy Council or Premier of the Empire, he receives no 
higher appellation than that of Ta Hsiieh Shih — a Doctor 
of the Great Study, an adept in the art of Government. 

The Chinese Empire has never realized the Utopia of 
Confucius; but his maxims have influenced its policy to 
such an extent that in the arrangements of the govern- 
ment a marked preference is given to moral over material 
interests. Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the 
influence which has been exerted by this little schedule of 
political ethics, occupying, as it has, so prominent a place 
in the Chinese mind for four-and-twenty centuries — 
teaching the people to regard the Empire as a vast family, 
and the Emperor to rule by moral influence, making the 
goal of his ambition not the w^ealth, but the virtue, of his 
subjects. It is certain that the doctrines which it em- 
bodies have been largely efficient in rendering China what 
she is, the most ancient and the most populous of exist- 
ing nations. 

Part II. is chiefly interesting for the views it presents 
of the condition of human nature. It is not, as its title 
would seem to indicate, a map of the moral faculties ; but 
simply a delineation of the two ways which invite the 
footsteps of every human pilgrim. On the one hand 
are traced the virtues that conduct to happiness; on the 
other the vices that lead to misery. Over the former is 
written Tao Hsin, " Wisdom Heart," and over the latter, 
Jen Hsin, " Human Heart," as descriptive of the disposi- 
tions from which they respectively proceed. 

These terms, with the two sentences of the chart in 
which they occur, originated in the Shu King, one of the 
oldest of the sacred books, and are there ascribed to the 
Emperor Shun, who filled the throne about b. c. 2100. 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 215 

Quaint and ill-defined, they have been retained in use 
through this long period as a simple expression for an 
obvious truth, recording as the result of a nation's ex- 
perience that " to err is human." They contain no nice 
distinction as to the extent to which our nature is infected 
with evil; but intimate that its general condition is such 
that the word human may fairly be placed in antithesis 
to wisdom and virtue. 

Yet the prevailing view of human nature maintained by 
Chinese ethical writers is that of its radical goodness. 
Though less ancient than the other, this latter is by no 
means a modern opinion ; and it is not a little remarkable 
that some of those questions which agitated the Christian 
Church in the fifth century were discussed in China nearly 
a thousand years before. They were not broached by 
Confucius. His genius was not inquisitive ; he was rather 
an architect seeking to construct a noble edifice, than a 
chemist testing his materials by minute analysis. And if 
nolle are philosophers but those who follow the clew of 
truth through the mazes of psychological and metaphysical 
speculation, then he has no right to the title; but if one 
who loves wisdom, perceiving it by intuition and recom- 
mending it with authority, be a philosopher, there are 
few on the roll of time who deserve a higher position. 
He was, as Sir J. Mackintosh says of Socrates, " much 
more a teacher of virtue, than even a searcher after 
truth." 

The next age, however, was characterized by a spirit of 
investigation which was due to his influence only as the 
intellectual impulse which he communicated set it to think- 
ing. The moral quality of human nature became a prin- 
cipal subject of discussion ; and every position admitted 
by the subject was successively occupied by some leading 
mind. Tz'e Sze, the grandson of the Sage, advanced a 



21 6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

theory which implied the goodness of human nature ; but 
Mencius, his disciple (b. c. 317), was the first who dis- 
tinctly enunciated the doctrine. Kaotze, one of his 
contemporaries, maintained that nature is destitute of any 
moral tendency, and wholly passive under the plastic hand 
of education. A discussion arose between them, a frag- 
ment of which, preserved in the works of Mencius, will 
serve to exhibit their mode of disputation, as well as the 
position of the parties. 

'' Nature," said Kaotze, " is a stick of timber, and good- 
ness is the vessel that is carved out of it." 

'' The wooden bowl," replied Mencius, " is not a natural 
product of the timber; but the tree requires to be de- 
stroyed in order to produce it. Is it necessary to destroy 
man's nature in order to make him good ? " 

" Then," said Kaotze, varying his illustration, " human 
nature may be compared with a stream of water. Open 
a sluice to the east, and it flows to the east; open one 
to the west, it flows to the westward. Equally indifferent 
is human nature with regard to good and evil." 

" Water," rejoined Mencius, '* is indifferent as to the 
east or the west; but has it no choice between up and 
down? Now human nature inclines to good, as water 
does to run downward. The evil it does is the effect of 
interference, just as water may be forced to run up hill. 
Man," he repeats, with rhetoric slightly at variance with 
his philosophy, " inclines to virtue, as water does to 
flow downward, or as the wild beast does to seek the 
forest." 

A few years later, Hsiintze, an acute and powerful 
writer, took the ground that human nature is evil. The 
influence of education he extolled in even higher terms 
than Kaotze, maintaining that whatever good it pro- 
duces, it achieves by a triumph over nature, which is 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 217 

taught to yield obedience to the dictates of prudence. 
Virtue is the slow result of teaching, and vice the spon- 
taneous fruit of neglected nature. 

Yangtze, about the commencement of the Christian 
era, endeavored to combine these opposite views; each 
contained important truth, but neither of them the whole 
truth. While human nature possessed benevolent affec- 
tions and a conscience approving of good, it had also 
perverse desires and a will that chose the evil. It was 
therefore both bad and good; and the character of each 
individual took its complexion, as virtuous or vicious, ac- 
cording to the class of qualities most cultivated. 

In the great controversy, Mencius gained the day. The 
two authors last named were placed on the Index Expur- 
gatorius of the literary tribunal ; and the advocate of hu- 
man nature was promoted to the second place among the 
oracles of the Empire for having added a new doctrine 
or developed a latent one in the Confucian system. This 
tenet is expressed in the first line of the San Tze Ching, an 
elementary book, which is committed to memory by every 
schoolboy in China — Jen chih cliu hsin pen shan — " Man 
commences life with a virtuous nature." But notwith- 
standing this addition to the national creed, the ancient 
aphorism of Shun is still held in esteem; and a genuine 
Confucian, in drawing a genealogical tree of the vices, 
still places the root of evil in the human heart. 

To remove this contradiction, Chu Hsi, the authorized 
expositor of the classics, devised a theory somewhat simi- 
lar to Plato's account of the origin of evil. It evidently 
partakes of the three principal systems above referred to ; 
professing, according to the first, to vindicate the original 
goodness of human nature, yet admitting, with another, 
that it contains some elements of evil — and thus virtually 
symbolizing with the third, which represents it as of a 



2i8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

mixed character. " The bright principle of virtue," he 
says in his notes on the Ta Hsiieh, " man derives from his 
heavenly origin; his pure spirit, when undarkened, com- 
prehends all truth, and is adequate to every occasion. 
But it is obstructed by the physical constitution and be- 
clouded by the animal (lit. jen yii the human) desires, 
so that it becomes obscure." 

The source of virtue, as indicated in the chart, is fai ho 
— " primordial harmony ; " and vice is ascribed to the 
influence of urn hsing — '' gross matter." The moral char- 
acter is determined by the prevailing influence, and man- 
kind are accordingly divided into three classes, which 
are thus described in a popular formula: Men of the 
first class are good without teaching ; those of the second 
may be made good by teaching ; and the last will continue 
bad in spite of teaching. 

The received doctrine in relation to human nature does 
not oppose such a serious obstacle as might at first be 
imagined to the reception of Christianity, though there 
is reason to fear that it may tinge the complexion of 
Christian theology. The candid and thoughtful will rec- 
ognize in the Bible a complete view of a subject which 
their various theories had only presented in detached 
fragments. In the state of primitive purity, it gives them 
a heaven-imparted nature in its original perfection ; in 
the supremacy of conscience, it admits a fact on which 
they rely as the main support of their doctrine; in the 
corruption of nature, introduced by sin, it gives them a 
class of facts to which their consciousness abundantly 
testifies ; and in its plan for the restoration of the moral 
ruin, it excites hope and satisfies reason. 

The doctrine of human goodness, though supported by 
a partial view of facts, seems rather to have been sug- 
gested by views of expediency. Mencius denounced the 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 219 

tenets of Kaotze as pernicious to the cause of morality, 
and he no doubt considered that to convince men that 
they are endowed with a virtuous nature is the most 
effectual method of encouraging them to the practice of 
virtue. In the absence of revelation, there is nothing 
better. But while faith in ourselves is a strong motive, 
faith in God is a stronger one; and while the view that 
man is endowed with a noble nature, which he only 
needs to develop according to its own generous instincts, 
is sublime, there is yet one which is more sublime — viz., 
that while fallen man is striving for the recovery of his 
divine original, he must work with fear and trembling, 
because it is God that worketh in him. 

Part III., the Chart of Moral Excellence as I have called 
it (or, more literally, of that which is to be striven after 
and held to), presents us with goodness in all its forms 
known to the Chinese. It is chiefly remarkable for its 
grouping, the entire domain being divided into five fami- 
lies, each ranged under a parent virtue. The Greeks and 
Romans reckoned four cardinal virtues ; but a difference 
in the mode of division implies no incompleteness in the 
treatment of the subject. The Chinese do not, because 
they count only twelve hours in the day instead of twenty- 
four, pretermit any portion of time; neither, when they 
number twenty-eight signs in the zodiac, instead of 
twelve, do they assign an undue length to the starry 
girdle of the heavens. The classification is arbitrary; 
and Cicero makes four virtues cover the whole ground 
which the Chinese moralist refers to five. 

But while, in a formal treatise, definition and explana- 
tion may supply the defects of nomenclature or arrange- 
ment, the terms employed for the cardinal virtues, are 
not without effect on the popular mind. In this respect 
the Chinese have the advantage. Theirs are Jen, I^ Li, 



220 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Chih, Hsin — Benevolence, Justice, Order,* Wisdom, Good 
Faith. Those of Plato and TuUy are Justice, Pru- 
dence, Fortitude, and Temperance. In comparing these. 
Prudence and Wisdom may be taken as identical, though 
the former appears to be rather more circumscribed in its 
sphere and tinged with the idea of self-interest. Tem- 
perance and Order, as explained in the respective systems, 
are also identical — the Latin term contemplating man as 
an individual, and the Chinese regarding him as a mem- 
ber of society. The former, Cicero defines as to TrpcTrov, 
and a sense of propriety or love of order is precisely the 
meaning w^hich the Chinese give to the latter. In the 
European code, the prominence given to Fortitude is 
characteristic of a martial people, among v^hom, at an 
earlier period, under the name of aperrj, it usurped the 
entire realm of virtue. In the progress of society, it was 
compelled to yield the throne to Justice and accept the 
place of a vassal, both Greek and Latin moralists assert- 
ing that no degree of courage which is not exerted in a 
righteous cause is worthy of a better appellation than 
audacity. They erred, therefore, in giving it the posi- 
tion of a cardinal virtue, and the Chinese have exhibited 
more discrimination by placing it in the retinue of Justice. 
They describe it by two words, Chih and Yung. Con- 
nected with the former, and explaining its idea, we read 
the precept, " When you fail, seek help in yourself; stand 
firm to your post, and let no vague desires draw you from 
it." Appended to the latter we have the injunction, 
" When you see the right, do it ; when you know a fault, 

* Though politeness is the common acceptation of the term as 
expressing a regard for propriety in social intercourse, in Chinese 
ethics it has a wider and higher signification. It is precisely 
what Malebranche makes the basis of his moral system and 
denominates " the love of universal order." 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 221 

correct it. Neither yield to excess, if rich, nor swerve 
from right, if poor." What a noble conception of moral 
courage, of true fortitude ! 

Benevolence and good faith which are quite subordinate 
in the heathen systems of the West, in that of China 
are each promoted to the leadership of a grand division. 
In fact, the whole tone of the Chinese morals, as exhibited 
in the names and order of their cardinal virtues, is con- 
sonant with the spirit of Christianity.* Benevolence leads 
the way in prompting to positive efforts for the good of 
others; justice follows, to regulate its exercise; wisdom 
sheds her light over both ; good faith imparts the stability 
necessary to success; order, or a sense of propriety, by 
bringing the whole conduct into harmony with the fit- 
ness of things, completes the radiant circle ; and he whose 
character is adorned with all these qualities may be safely 
pronounced tctiis teres at que rotimdus. 

The theory of moral sentiments early engaged the at- 
tention of Chinese philosophers, and particularly the in- 
quiry as to the origin and nature of our benevolent affec- 
tions. Some, like Locke and Paley, regarded them as 

* Cicero thus argues that there could be no occasion for the 
exercise of any virtue in a state of perfect blessedness, taking up 
the cardinal virtues seriatim: " Si nobis, cum ex hac vita migra- 
remus, in beatorum insulis, ut fabulae ferunt, immortale sevum 
degere liceret, quid opus esset eloquentia, cum judicia nulla 
fierent? aut ipsis etiam virtutibus? Nee enim fortitudine indi- 
geremus, nullo proposito aut labore aut periculo ; nee justitia, cum 
esset nihil quod appeteretur alieni; nee temperantia, quae regeret 
eas quae nullae essent libidines; ne prudentia quidem egeremus, 
nullo proposito delectu bonorum et malorum. Una igitur essemus 
beati cognitione rerum et scientia." He has failed to conceive, 
as Sir J. Mackintosh well suggests, that there would still be room 
for the exercise of love — of benevolence. A Chinese, educated to 
regard benevolence as the prime virtue of life, would naturally 
give it the first place in his ideal of the future state. 



222 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

wholly artificial — the work of education. Others, like 
Hobbes and Mandeville, represented them as spontaneous 
and natural, but still no more than varied phases of that 
one ubiquitous Proteus — self-love. Mencius, with Bishop 
Butler, views them as disinterested and original. To 
establish this, he resorts to his favorite mode of reasoning, 
and supposes the case of a spectator moved by the mis- 
fortune of a child falling into a well. Hobbes would have 
described the pity of the beholder as the fruit of self-love 
acting through the imagination — the " fiction of future 
calamity to himself." Mencius says his efforts to rescue 
the child would be incited, not by a desire to secure the 
friendship of its parents or the praise of his neighbors, 
nor even to relieve himself from the pain occasioned by 
the cries of the child, but by a spontaneous feeling which 
pities distress and seeks to alleviate it. 

The man who thus vindicates our nature from the 
charge of selfishness in its best affections sometimes ex- 
patiates on their social utility. He does so, however, only 
to repress utilitarianism of a more sordid type. When 
the Prince of Liang inquired what he had brought to 
enrich his kingdom, " Nothing," he replied, " but benevo- 
lence and justice; " and he then proceeded to show, with 
eloquent earnestness, how the pursuit of wealth would 
tend to anarchy, while that of virtue would insure happi- 
ness and peace. An earlier writer, Meitze, made the 
principle of benevolence the root of all the virtues; and 
in advocating the duty of equal and universal love, he 
seems to have anticipated the fundamental maxim of 
Jonathan Edwards that virtue consists in love to being 
as such, and in proportion to the amount of being. This 
led him to utter the iloble sentiment that he would " sub- 
mit his body to be ground to powder if by so doing he 
could benefit mankind." 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 223 

The dcKtrine of Meitze is rejected by the moraHsts 
of the estabhshed school as heretical, on the ground of its 
inconsistency with the exercise in due degree of the rela- 
tive affections, such as filial piety, fraternal love, etc. 
They adopted a more cautious criterion of virtue — that 
of the moderate exercise of all the natural faculties. 
Virtus est medium vitiorum et utrinque reductum is with 
them a familiar principle. One of the Four Books, the 
Chung Yung, is founded on it. But instead of treating 
the subject with the analytic accuracy with which it is 
elaborated by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, the 
author kindles with the idea of absolute perfection, and 
indites a sublime rhapsody on the character of him who 
holds on his way, undeviating and unimpeded, between 
a twofold phalanx of opposing vices. 

Part IV. is the counterpart of the preceding, and is in- 
teresting mainly on account of the use for which it is 
designed. The whole chart is practical, and is intended, 
the author tells us, to be suspended in the chamber of the 
student as a constant monitor. The terms in which he 
states this contain an allusion to a sentiment engraved 
by one of the ancient emperors on his wash-basin : " Let 
my heart be daily cleansed and renewed, let it be kept 
clean and new forever." This part of his work has for 
its special object to aid the reader in detecting the moral 
impurities that may have attached themselves to his char- 
acter, and carrying forward a process of daily and con- 
stant improvement. 

To some it may be a matter of surprise to find this 
exercise at all in vogue in a country where a divine re- 
ligion has not imparted the highest degree of* earnest- 
ness in the pursuit of virtue. The number who practise 
it is not large ; but even in pagan China, the thorny path 
of self-knowledge exhibits " here and there a traveller." 



224 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Tseng Futze, an eminent disciple of Confucius, and 
the Xenophon of his Memorabilia, thus describes his own 
practice : " I every day examine myself on three points. 
In exertions on behalf of others, have I been unfaithful? 
In intercourse with others, have I been untrue? The 
instruction I have heard, have I made my own ? " 

An example so revered could not remain without imi- 
tators. Whether any of them has surpassed the model 
is doubtful ; but his '' three points " they have multiplied 
into the bristling array displayed in the chart, which they 
daily press in to their bosoms, as some papal ascetics 
were wont to do their jagged belts. Some of them, in 
order to secure greater fidelity in this unpleasant duty, 
are accustomed to perform it in the family temple, where 
they imagine their hearts laid bare to the view of their 
ancestors, and derive encouragement from their supposed 
approval. The practice is a beautiful one, but it indicates 
a want. It shows that human virtue is conscious of her 
weakness ; and in climbing the roughest steeps feels com- 
pelled to lean on the arm of religion. 

In a few cases this impressive form of domestic piety 
may prove efficacious ; but the benefit is due to a figment 
of the imagination similar to that which Epictetus recom- 
mends when he suggests that the student of virtue shall 
conceive himself to be living in the presence of Socrates. 
If fancy is thus operative, how much more effectual must 
faith be — that faith which rises into knowledge and makes 
one realize that he is acting under the eye of ever-present 
Deity ! 

It is one of the glories of Christianity that by diffusing 
this sentiment she has made virtue not an occasional visitor 
to our planet, but brought her down to dwell familiarly 
with men. What otherwise would have been only the 
severe discipline of a few philosophers, she has made the 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 225 

daily habit of myriads.* How many persons in how 
many lands now close each day of life by comparing every 
item of their conduct with a far more perfect '' chart for 
self-examination " than our author has furnished ? f 

Next to the knowledge of right and wrong Confucius 
placed " sincerity of purpose " in pursuing the right, as 
an essential in the practice of virtue ; but as he expressed 
only the vaguest notions of a Supreme Being, and en- 
joined for popular observance no higher form of religion 
than the worship of the ancestral manes, a sense of re- 
sponsibility, and, by consequence, " sincerity of purpose," 
are sadly deficient among his disciples. Some of the 
more earnest, on meeting with a religion which reveals 
to them a heart-searching God, a sin-atoning Saviour, a 
soul-sanctifying Spirit, and an immortality of bliss, have 
joyfully embraced it, confessing that they find therein 
motives and supports of which their own system is wholly 
destitute. 

GENERAL INFERENCES. 

On this sheet (the chart above translated) we have a 
projection of the national mind. It indicates the high 
grade in the scale of civilization attained by the people 
among whom it originated, exhibiting all the elements of 
an elaborate morality. Political ethics are skilfully con- 
nected with private morals ; and the virtues and vices are 

* " Religion," says Sir James Mackintosh, speaking of Plato, 
" had not then, besides her own discoveries, brought down the 
most awful and the most beautiful forms of moral truth to the 
humblest station in human society." 

t There are many evening hymns in which the review of the 
day is beautifully and touchingly expressed, but in none perhaps 
better than in that of Gellert commencing *' Ein tag ist wieder 
hinr 



226 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

marshalled in a vast array, which required an advanced 
state of society for their development. 

The accuracy with which these various traits of char- 
acter are noted implies the same thing; and the correct- 
ness of the moral judgments here recorded infers some- 
thing more than culture — it discloses a grand fact of our 
nature, that, whatever may be thought of innate ideas, 
it contains inherent principles which produce the same 
fruits in all climates. 

These tables indicate, at the same time, that the Chinese 
have made less proficiency in the study of mind than in 
that of morals. This is evident from some confusion 
(more observable in the original than in the translation) 
of faculties, sentiments, and actions. The system is, on 
the whole, pretty well arranged ; but there are errors and 
omissions enough to show that their ethics, like their 
physics, are merely the records of phenomena which 
they observe ab extra without investigating their causes 
and relations. While they expatiate on the virtues, they 
make but little inquiry into the nature of virtue; while 
insisting on various duties, they never discuss the ground 
of obligation ; and while duties are copiously expounded, 
not a word is said on the subject of rights. 

The combined influence of an idolatrous religion and a 
despotic government, under which there can be no such 
motto as Dieu et mon droit, may account for this latter 
deficiency. But similar lacunoe are traceable in so many 
directions that we are compelled to seek their explana- 
tion in a subjective cause — in some peculiarity of the 
Chinese mind. 

They have, for instance, no system of psychology, 
and the only rude attempt at the formation of one con- 
sists in an enumeration of the organs of perception. These 
they express as wii kuan, the *' five senses." But what 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 227 

are they ? The eyes, ears, nose, mouth ; and not the skin 
or nerves, but the heart. The sense of touch, which alone 
possesses the power of waking us from the Brahma dream 
of a universe floating in our own brain, and convincing 
us of the objective reaHty of an external world, is 
utterly ignored ; to say nothing of the absurdity of class- 
ing the ''heart'' — the intellect (for so they intend the 
word) — with those passive media of intelligence. This 
elementary effort dates from the celebrated Mencius; 
and, perhaps for that very reason, the mind of the mod- 
erns has not advanced beyond it, as one of their pious 
emperors abdicated the throne rather than be guilty of 
reigning longer than his grandfather. 

Another instance of philosophical classification equally 
ancient, equally authoritative, and equally absurd, is that 
of the five elements. They were given as chin, mu, shui, 
hiio, fu — i. e., metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Now 
not to force this into a disparaging contrast with the re- 
sults of our recent science, which recognizes nothing as 
an element but an ultimate form of matter, we may 
fairly compare it with the popular division of " four ele- 
ments." The principle of classification being the enumera- 
tion of the leading forms of inorganic matter which enter 
into the composition of organic bodies, the Chinese have 
violated it by introducing wood into the category ; and 
they evince an obtuseness of observation utterly incon- 
sistent with the possession of philosophic talent in not 
perceiving the important part which atmospheric air per- 
forms in the formation of other bodies. The extent to 
which they adhere to the quintal enumeration or classi- 
fication by " fives " illustrates, in a rather ludicrous man- 
ner, the same want of discrimination. Thus, while in 
mind they have the five senses, and in matter the five 
elements, in morals they reckon five virtues, in society 



228 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

five relations, in astronomy five planets, in ethnology five 
races, in optics five colors, in music five notes, in the 
culinary art five tastes ; and, not to extend the catalogue, 
they divide the horizon into Hve quarters. 

These instances evince a want of analytical power ; and 
the deficiency is still further displayed by the absence of 
any analysis of the sounds of their language until they 
were made acquainted with the alphabetical Sanskrit ; 
the non-existence, to the present day, of any inquiry into 
the forms of speech which might be called a grammar, 
or of any investigation of the processes of reasoning cor- 
responding with our logic. While they have soared into 
the attenuated atmosphere of ontological speculation, 
they have left all the regions of physical and abstract 
science almost as trackless as the arctic snows. 

It would be superfluous to vindicate the Chinese from 
the charge of mental inferiority in the presence of that 
immense social and political organization which has held 
together so many millions of people for so many thousands 
of years, and especially of numerous arts, now dropping 
their golden fruits into the lap of our own civilization, 
whose roots can be traced to the soil of that ancient 
empire. But a strange defect must be admitted in the 
national mind. We think, however, that it is more in its 
development than in its constitution, and may be ac- 
counted for by the influence of education. 

If we include in that term all the influences that affect 
the mind, the first place is due to language ; and a language 
whose primary idea is the representation of the objects 
of sense, and which is so imperfect a vehicle of abstract 
thought that it is incapable of expressing by single words 
such ideas as space, quality, relation, etc., must have 
seriously obstructed the exercise of the intellect in that 
direction. A servile reverence for antiquity which makes 



ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHINESE 229 

it sacrilege to alter the crude systems of the ancients 
increased the difficulty; and the government brought it 
to the last degree of aggravation by admitting, in the 
pubHc-service examinations, a very limited number of 
authors, with their expositors, to whose opinions con- 
formity is encouraged by honors, and from whom dissent 
is punished by disgrace. 

These fetters can only be stricken off by the hand of 
Christianity ; and we are not extravagant in predicting 
that a stupendous intellectual revolution will attend its 
progress. Revealing an omnipresent God as Lord of the 
Conscience it will add a new hemisphere to the world of 
morals; stimulating inquiry in the spirit of the precept 
'' Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," it will 
subvert the blind principle of deference; and perhaps its 
grandest achievement in the work of mental emancipa- 
tion may be the superseding of the ancient ideographic 
language by providing a medium better adapted to the 
purposes of a Christian civilization. It would only be 
a repetition of historic triumphs if some of the vernacular 
dialects, raised from the depths where they now lie in 
neglect, and shaped by the forces which heave them to 
the surface, should be made, under the influence of a new 
sunshine, to teem with the rich productions of a new 
literature, philosophy, and science. 

N. B.— The original text of these reinarkable charts is here 
appended for the benefit of those who read Chinese. 



230 THE LORE OF CATHAY 




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XIII 

CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 

THE word " inspiration," as applied to the notions 
of the Chinese, must be taken with considerable 
latitude, as expressing their conceptions of a 
superhuman authority, which pervades and lies behind 
their Sacred Books, as the source and basis of their teach- 
ings. 

As their Sacred Books belong to three leading schools 
of religious thought, — not to speak of numberless alloys, 
— it is not to be supposed that the views of these schools 
on the subject of inspiration coincide more closely than 
on other matters in regard to which they are in fact 
widely divergent. It is hardly possible that the material- 
ism of the Taoist, the idealism of the Buddhist, and the 
ethical Sadduceeism of the Confucianist, should hold 
much in common on the subject of inspiration. We shall 
accordingly point out the peculiar form which the idea 
of inspiration assumes in connection with each of them. 

While the high social development of the Chinese, their 
vast numbers, and their long history, give value to any 
elements of their fundamental beliefs, in order to be of 
interest to us, these must be taken at a date prior to 
their contact with Christianity. 



To begin with Taoism : — Indigenous to China, its root 
idea is the belief in the possibility of acquiring a mastery 

234 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 235 

over matter, so as to change its forms at will, and thus 
protect ourselves against decay and death. 

Those who have attained immortality constitute a 
pantheon, ruling over the material world and presiding 
over the destinies of man. Material in its origin, this 
school gradually evolved a system of belief strikingly 
analogous to the so-called '' spiritualism," which not long 
ago attracted so much attention in our Western World. 

Instead, however, of holding that all spirits are indis- 
criminately ferried over to the farther shore, it considers 
that those of the profane multitude, not being sufficiently 
concentrated to resist the inroads of decay, vanish into 
air and cease to be ; while a favored few, by dint of per- 
severing effort, subdue their animal nature, and weave 
its fibres into a compact unity that defies destruction. A 
favorite analogy to illustrate this process is their theory 
of the evolution of gold, which, as they believe, originally 
a base metal, passes upward through a succession of 
forms, all liable to tarnish or corrode, until it reaches a 
state in which its perfected essence remains forever un- 
changeable. The diamond, — a gem of " purest ray 
serene," — smiling at the sharpest steel, and mocking the 
hottest fire, is another symbol frequently used ; and it 
might have done much to confirm their faith in this theory, 
had their science gone far enough to connect the gem 
that shines in immortal splendor with the fossilized car- 
bon that lies hidden in the bosom of the earth, or with 
those evanescent forms of vitalized carbon that beautify 
its surface. 

The happy few, as precious as gold and as rare as the 
diamond, who attain to immortality, do not leave their 
bodies behind them, like cast-ofif clothing; nor would 
their bodies cause the boat of Charon to draw a deeper 
draught, for the body itself is transformed and becomes 



236 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

a " spiritual body," with changed quaUties and new 
powers. Its qualities are such in general as we ascribe to 
spirit; its powers are limited only by the stage of its 
progress, — a progress that rises from sphere to sphere 
without a bound. 

Among the acquired powers of these immortals, one 
which occupies a leading place is that of spiritual mani- 
festation. These hsien jcn, or genii, as they are called, are 
of various grades ; and all of them are capable of renew- 
ing their intercourse with human beings, among whom 
they walk invisible. It is seldom that they re-appear in 
their primitive shape; but they frequently make their 
presence felt through the intervention of suitable media. 

A favorite medium is the human body, in a hypnotic 
condition ; and through such, when properly invoked, the 
genii are wont to speak to mortals, as Apollo spoke 
through the Delphic Priestess. Their oracles in such 
cases relate, in general, to the cure of disease, or the 
conduct of family affairs. In early times, they aspired 
to the direction of affairs of state; but the detection of 
numerous impostures brought them into discredit, and 
their influence is now restrained to a humbler sphere, 
though it is still real, and by no means to be despised. 

Another medium is the fii Ian, an instrument which we 
may describe as a magic pen. It consists of a vertical 
stick, suspended like a pendulum from a cross-bar. The 
bar is supported at each end by a votary of the genii, care 
being taken that it shall rest on the hand as freely as an 
oscillating engine does on its bearings. A table is 
sprinkled with meal ; and, after being properly invoked, 
the spirit manifests his presence by slight irregular mo- 
tions of the pen or pendulum, which leaves its trace in 
the meal. These marks are deciphered by competent 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 237 

authorities, who make known the response from the spirit 
world. 

This will be recognized as an early form of planchette. 
In the Far East, it has been in vogue for more than a 
thousand years ; and there is as yet no sign that it " has 
had its day." Not m.erely Taoists by profession, but 
scholars, who call themselves Confucian, believe in it with 
a more or less confiding faith. When they resort to it 
with a serious purpose, they usually get an answer which 
they accept bond Me, whether it meet their wishes or 
oppose them. Often, however, they call in the magic pen 
to supply diversion for the late hours of a convivial party ; 
and in such cases, they tell me, they are sometimes sur- 
prised by the result, — an invisible person evidently join- 
ing the festive circle, and solving or creating mysteries. 

Skeptical as are the Chinese literati, no one that I have 
seen doubts the genuineness of some of the communica- 
tions so obtained. I have had such sent to me from a 
distant place, with the assurance that they were obtained 
through the magic pen at the altars of the gods ; and, 
whatever I may have thought on the subject, I could not 
doubt that the sender believed in them. 

Where such credulity renders the public mind as sus- 
ceptible to impressions as the meal does a writing-table, 
it is obvious that revelations for the purpose of religious 
instruction are to be expected. The fact is that the magic 
pen is one of the most prolific sources of religious litera- 
ture. Mahomet claimed that the Koran, was brought 
leaf by leaf from Paradise by the angel Gabriel. The 
hierophants of China impose on the credulity of their 
countrymen, by ascribing their own teachings to revela- 
tions made by planchette. 

Some of these so-called revelations are deservedly 



238 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

popular, on account of the beauty of their style and the 
excellence of their subject matter; and they are held in 
special reverence, as worthy expressions of the mind of 
deified Sages. 

To this category belong : — 

I. — The Kan Ying P'ien, a treatise on retribution, de- 
rived by this method from no less a personage than 
Laotze, the great founder of the Taoist sect. 

2. — The Chiieh Shih Ching, or world-waking appeal of 
Kuan Ti, tutelar god of the reigning dynasty. 

3. — The Yin Chi Wen, or Book of Rewards and Punish- 
ments, referred to Wen Ch'ang, the god of letters. 

Others might be added, but I forbear to cite them, 
because they " attain not to the first three." 

The last cited is ascribed to Wen Ch'ang, the god of 
letters, a Taoist deity much in favor with scholars of the 
Confucian School; for, wide apart as they are in funda- 
mental principles, the dividing lines of the three sects are 
now well-nigh obliterated. Each borrows deities from 
the other, and priests of one are found in charge of tem- 
ples that belong to the other ; — a result, not so much due 
to rapprochement in their authorized teachings, as to a 
chronic confusion in the popular mind. 

II 

Buddhism, as the stronger faith, has " drawn the cover 
to its own side," — adopting many Taoist usages, and, 
among them, the practice of procuring spiritualistic reve- 
lations. In vain do the orthodox denounce it, as tending 
to corrupt the canon, and as derogatory to the dignity of 
the deities invoked; the practice continues to flourish. 

Of the extent to which it is carried, you may judge 
from the following indignant protest, which I translate 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 239 

from the Hsiu Chih Yao Yen, a practical guide for the 
Buddhist priesthood : — 

'* In these latter days, men's minds are superficial and 
false. There is nothing that they do not counterfeit. 
Even in the dissemination of good books, they resort to 
falsehood to aid their circulation. Their own rude lan- 
guage, which has no meaning more than skin-deep, they 
palm off as revealed through the magic pen, — thus im- 
posing on the ignorant. 

" They mostly father their effusions on Wen Ch'ang 
and Lii Tsu ; less frequently, on Kuan Ti. Only think of 
it: — In case of ordinary books or pictures, to falsify the 
authorship is held as an odious crime. How much more 
hateful the crime of adulterating the teachings of gods 
and sages ! When book-shelves are loaded with fabrica- 
tions, the circulation of the genuine article is impeded. 
Instances of this kind of outrage on Holy Names are too 
frequent to enumerate. 

" Recently some cases of a truly extraordinary char- 
acter have come to light. Shameless forgeries are put 
forth as books of Buddha! Buddha himself is some- 
times invoked to indite a commentary, and even Taoist 
genii are called on to reveal an exposition of Buddhist 
classics. Then we have Hsts of Buddha's titles, purport- 
ing to emanate from spirit revelations. The blunders of 
these books go without castigation, and falsehood gains 
strength day by day. Formerly moral tracts were aids 
to virtue; to-day they are used to mislead mankind." 

Here follows a list of spurious books, ending with the 
remark that " names of men and places, though formed 
on Sanskrit models, are so clumsily constructed that their 
rough angles pierce through the thin disguise; and the 
more extended a discourse, the more thoroughly does the 
fabricator succeed in exposing his imposture." 



240 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

To note the adoption of this Taoist practice by a sec- 
tion of Buddhism is not foreign to our subject, because 
it is Chinese in origin; but, to ascend the stream and 
treat of inspiration from the stand-point of orthodox 
Buddhism would lead us away from China. It would 
carry us into the world of Hindu mysticism, where 
Sakyamuni laid the foundation of his conquering 
creed. 

Suffice it to say that, to the Buddhist, there is no form 
of existence higher than Buddha, — no authority above 
that of Buddha. He does not look beyond Buddha to an 
all-pervading spirit, as Christians look through Christ up 
to the Father of Spirits. For him, Buddha is ultimate; 
and, as the name signifies supreme intelligence, so all 
believers accept the utterances of Buddha as truth not 
to be called in question. With them, the only possible 
question is that touching the authenticity of those utter- 
ances, — in other words, respecting the proper contents of 
the Buddhistic canon. How much of that canon fell from 
the lips of Gautama, and how far the teachings of his fol- 
lowers are deducible from his original revelations, are 
questions of serious import ; or rather they would become 
such, if once the spirit of critical inquiry were fairly 
aroused. If, among the heterogeneous materials com- 
posing the canon as acknowledged by one or other of the 
schools, the spurious utterances ascribed to Buddha were 
sifted from the genuine, there would remain but a very 
small residuum. Among his subordinates, the degree of 
authority conceded to each is decided according to their 
grade of intelligence or rank in the canonical hierarchy; 
but no spiritual influence emanating from a higher source 
is admitted. This is true of primitive or atheistic Bud- 
dhism ; but in Buddhism, as modified by time, and by 
contact with other creeds, we find a superintending and 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 241 

enlightening influence from the spirit of Buddha freely 
acknowledged. 



Ill 



The ideas of Confucianists in regard to inspiration 
differ widely from those of both the preceding schools. 
They are the ideas, not of a sect, but of the bulk of the 
Chinese people. 

When the three schools are named in series, the Ju, or 
Confucian, stands at the head; but when the Confucian 
is spoken of by itself, it is generally described as ta chiao, 
— the great, universal, or catholic school. Its tenets form 
the bed-rock of Chinese civilization, whatever may be the 
complexion of the over-lying soil. The yellow of Bud- 
dhism and the black of Taoism may be everywhere de- 
tected, but they form only a superficial tinge on the 
original background. Every Buddhist or Taoist (outside 
of the priesthood) is, first of all, a Confucianist ; but the 
converse is by no means true, — the more educated Chinese 
in general reject both the other sects, and speak disre- 
spectfully of their claims, though not exempt from their 
influence. Hence a common error in estimating the num- 
ber of Buddhists on the globe; for, unlike Burmah and 
Siam, where Buddhism is established by law, the intel- 
lectual culture of China flows apart from Buddhism; 
and, in China, the priesthood of Buddha, with but few 
redeeming exceptions, have sunk to the condition of an 
ignorant and despised caste. 

The canon of Confucianism is, therefore, pre-eminently 
the canon of China ; and, to find what views the Chinese 
hold as to its inspiration, we have in the first place to 
turn to the canon itself. 



242 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

The canon consists, — if we reject the enumeration of 
thirteen books as too wide, and accept that of nine as 
more exact, — of two classes of works: — the pre-Confu- 
cian, and the post-Confucian. The Li Chi, or " Book of 
Rites," is classed with the former, though compiled under 
the dynasty of Han, because it professes to preserve the 
traditions of an earlier age. Held in high esteem, it is 
nevertheless deemed somewhat apocryphal. The other 
four pre-Confucian books were all edited by the great 
Sage, and issued with his imprimatur. 

They contain such fragments of antiquity, — historical, 
poetical, and philosophical, — as he thought worth while 
to preserve. Among them there is not much of unity to 
be discerned ** in member, joint, or limb;" and, as a 
whole, they are not regarded as emanating from a super- 
natural source. 

There are, however, in this collection, two sketches of 
a rudimentary philosophy, for which a supernatural origin 
is distinctly asserted. One of these is a table of mystic 
symbols, from which diagrams of the " Book of Changes " 
were subsequently evolved. 

In the reign of Fu Hsi, 2800 b. c, this was brought up 
from the waters of the Yellow River on the back of a 
beast, which was " half horse and half alligator ; " signify- 
ing, if we admit a grain of truth in the legend, that the 
first eight diagrams, which form the basis of the sixty- 
four in the " Book of Changes," were suggested by the 
mysterious markings on the carapace of a tortoise. That 
the figures on the shell of a tortoise were employed in 
divination is attested by history. Princes kept sacred 
shells in temples erected for the purpose, and the shell 
only ceased to be consulted, when the ampler book be- 
came known and accepted as a treasury of divine oracles. 

The other fragment of direct revelation is an outline 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 243 

of natural and political philosophy called the Himg Fan, 
or " Great Plan." It is said to have been brought to the 
Emperor Yu, from the waters of the river Lo, by a 
monster somewhat similar to that which figures in the 
preceding legend. 

Both stories were indorsed by Confucius, if the Ap- 
pendix to the '' Book of Changes " be his work ; and the 
highest scholars of China continue to receive them as 
true beyond a question. 

Leaving the barbarous age in which tortoise and dragon 
are messengers of the gods, we come to a more rational 
period, when man becomes the medium through which 
the Will of Heaven is revealed. This view is first enunci- 
ated in the " Book of Odes " (circa 1000 b. c), in a pas- 
sage which remains in use as a popular formula: — 
" Heaven, having given life to men, raised up princes to 
rule them and teachers to instruct them," — a statement 
which, with all the light of our developed Christianity, it 
is not easy to improve upon. 

The general conception, of teachers providentially 
raised up, became at length restricted to that of certain 
eminent men who were looked on as infallible guides. 
They were called sheng jen, a phrase commonly rendered 
" holy men," but one which expresses wisdom rather than 
holiness. They were numerous in remote antiquity, — in- 
ventors of arts sharing the honor along with the founders 
of human society. Thus Fu Hsi, who instituted marriage, 
was a sheng jen; Hwang Ti, who invented medicine, was 
a sheng jen; Tsang Chieh, the inventor of letters, and Ta 
Nao, the author of the most ancient calendar, are also 
venerated as sheng jen. In later ages, such paragons of 
wisdom were few, and their advent always heralded by 
presages of an unmistakable character. 

The sage of sages is Confucius. He makes no direct 



244 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

claim to inspiration, and always speaks of himself with 
becoming modesty. According to himself, there are vir- 
tues to which he has not attained, and there is knowledge 
that lies beyond his range. Yet he evinces at times a 
sublime consciousness of a peculiar mission. When in 
peril, he exclaims : — '' If it be the will of Heaven to pre- 
serve my doctrine for the benefit of mankind, what power 
can my enemies have over me ? " At other times, confi- 
dent of the truth of his teachings, he appeals, not to the 
people of his own day, but to the judgment of sages that 
are to appear in distant ages. 

His teaching was from Heaven, bilt it was not imparted 
to him in a supernatural way. " How," he exclaims, 
*' does Heaven speak, — what is the language it addresses 
to men? The seasons follow their course, and all things 
spring into life, — this is the language of Heaven." In 
his view, it was the province of the sage to interpret Na- 
ture, not merely as she lives in the forms of matter, but 
as she breathes in the soul of man. 

This conception of the sheng jen, or sage, had begun 
to take shape in the dawn of Chinese civilization. Con- 
fucius, who did more than any other to fix the forms of 
that civilization by a wise selection of the best traditions, 
seized on the idea as one of essential importance, and 
gave it precision, without arrogating the character. 

His grandson, K'ung Chieh, half a century later, gave 
the world a theory of ethics, based, like that of Aristotle, 
on the assumption that good is a middle term between two 
evils. Unlike the Stagyrite, he gives free scope to a 
fervid imagination, and draws a glowing picture of con- 
crete good in the character of the sheng jen, or perfect 
man. The passage is an eloquent apotheosis of wisdom 
and virtue, for which his great ancestor confessedly 
served as a human model. 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 245 

Not only has posterity permitted Confucius to remain 
on that exalted pedestal, but each generation has con- 
tributed to raise him higher. 

A few extracts from this treatise will serve to exhibit 
the Sage as expounder of the Will of Heaven : — 

" None but the most sincere is able to exhaust the capa- 
bilities of his own nature. By so doing, he aids the work 
of heaven and earth, and takes his place as third among 
the powers of the universe.'* 

" He who possesses this perfect sincerity attains to 
prophetic foresight. This quality, therefore, partakes of 
the divine." 

" Great is the Holy Sage (or shcng jen) ; all the books 
of all the rites wait for him to fulfill them." 

" He can appeal to the gods above, because he knows 
Heaven; and to the wise of coming times, because he 
knows men." 

*^ He speaks, and none hesitates to believe ; he acts, and 
none fails to approve." 

" His fame overflows the boundaries of China, and 
extends to barbarous peoples. Wherever ship or chariot 
can go, wherever sun and moon give light, wherever 
frosts and dews descend, — there is no one who has blood 
and breath, who does not honor and love such a man. 
Therefore, he is said to be the equal of Heaven." 

This description of the ideally perfect man, drawn as 
it was from the teaching and example of Confucius, 
caused him to be accepted in that character. Mencius, 
the St. Paul of Confucianism, its last and greatest apostle, 
confirmed the judgment of the author of '' The Mean." 
His words are : — " From the time that human Hfe ap- 
peared on earth down to this day, the world has seen no 
man Hke Confucius." His estimate of China's greatest 
teacher has been ratified by succeeding ages. 



246 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In process of time, speculative thought attained a 
higher development; and, in the theory of the universe 
which it produced, the shmg jen holds a definite place. 
Heaven, earth, and man, form a triad of agents, as hinted 
already in the " Doctrine of the Mean " ; — the first repre- 
senting self-acting spirit; the second, plastic or passive 
matter ; the third, man ; — a child born of their union, — a 
microcosm or epitome of the universe, his soul reflecting 
the pure spirit of Heaven, his body composed of the gross 
elements of earth. For the Sage it is reserved to connect 
the two in a perfect union. Accordingly we see, in all 
the temples of Confucius, a central inscription just over 
the shrine of the spirit tablet: — Yii ficn ti wei ts'an, — 
" He forms a triad with heaven and earth." 

The conception is obviously pantheistic. In the person 
of the Sage, the dual powers find their harmony com- 
pleted. He receives no spoken communication; asks no 
illuminating influence; but, embodying in its highest de- 
gree the spiritual essence of both, he becomes thereby an 
infallible expositor of the universe, — a law-giver to the 
human race. It is said of him, — *' He speaks, and his 
word is law to the world; he acts, and his conduct is an 
unerring example." 

It is in this light that the Chinese, without exception, 
are accustomed to look on the last of their Sages. He is 
not a god, but a perfect man; not a prophet who utters 
occasional oracles, but, in word and deed, a constant 
manifestation of ideal excellence. He does not speak in 
the name of a higher power ; but, if that power were con- 
ceived as speaking, it could add nothing to the authority 
of the Sage. 

How near this conception approaches to the Hindu 
view of Buddha, as the perfect embodiment of intelli- 
gence and virtue, needs not to be pointed out. Irk ih^ 



CHINESE IDEAS OF INSPIRATION 247 

Confucian system, however, there is a vague personality 
called Heaven, above the Sage; while, in the Buddhist, 
there is none. 

It follows that everything that bears the seal of such 
an authority is sacred in the highest degree. The verbal 
text of his books is not to be altered, no matter what 
faults may be detected by rational criticism. Thus, in- 
complete and pleonastic expressions, — the errors of an- 
cient copyists, — are faithfully reproduced, much as our 
Hebrew Bibles reproduce the '' ayin siispensum/' and 
other errors of transcription. This superstitious rever- 
ence for the letter of the canon symbolizes and fosters 
that unprogressive conservatism which has become the 
unenviable distinction of the Chinese race. 

Confucius, it ought to be said, and his great disciple 
Mencius, lend no countenance to such unreasoning wor- 
ship of antiquity. The latter says boldly, — '' It were 
better to have no books than to be bound to believe all 
that our books contain," — referring, it is thought, to the 
Shu, the canonical book of ancient history. And Con- 
fucius lays it down, as the first duty of a ruler, to aim 
at the " renovation of his people." 

In conclusion, it would hardly be pertinent to raise the 
question whether the views of inspiration, which we have 
been considering, are favorable or adverse to the adop- 
tion of Christianity. The great Sage, so far from arro- 
gating definitive completeness for his own system, leads 
his disciples to expect the appearance of sheng jen in 
coming ages. Nor is the advent of such Heaven-sent 
teachers limited to China. There is, therefore, nothing to 
prevent a sound Confucian accepting Christ as the Light 
of the World, without abandoning his faith in Confucius 
as a special teacher for the Chinese people. " Confucius 
plus Christ " is a formula to which he has no insuper- 



248 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

able objection; but the man, who approaches him witK 
such an alternative as '' Christ or Confucius," is not likely 
to meet with a patient hearing. 

As a matter of fact, native Christians continue to be- 
lieve in the mission of Confucius, much as converted 
Jews do in that of Moses. 



XIVI 



BUDDHISM A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 

THE religion which above all others has a right to 
claim serious study, in comparison with Chris- 
tianity, is Buddhism. It has been brought for- 
ward of late as a rival to Christianity, not merely by its 
traditional votaries, but by poets and philosophers,* 
educated in the schools of Christendom. The poet pur- 
loined the ornaments of the daughters of Zion to deck 
an Eastern beauty, f and the philosopher has endeavored 
to persuade Western thinkers that their highest wisdom 
is to sit at the feet of the gymnosophists of India. 

One scarcely knows whether the gospel would be more 
discredited by being set forth as plagiarizing in part from 
the traditions of India, or by being proven to be a less 
effectual remedy for human woe than the pessimism of 
Sakyamuni. 

There is a lawsuit now pending in the courts of Eng- 
land, in which a claimant seeks to oust the present occu- 
pant of a great estate by proving that he belongs to an 
older branch of the family, and that his title ante-dates 
the other by more than a century. 

In the forum of the world, the contest for priority of 
title to the traditions referred to is of infinitely higher 

* Notably Arnold and Schoppenhaur. 

t Since this was first published Sir Edwin Arnold has given us 
a noble Palinodia in his " Light of the World." 

249 



250 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

moment. After the learned investigations of Dr. Kel- 
logg, it can scarcely be said of it adJiiic sub judice lis est; 
and yet it is one of those cases in which defeat is never 
acknowledged, — in which, in fact, we may expect to see 
the old pretensions advanced again and again with as 
much confidence as if they had never been refuted. 

It is not my intention to go into this question at length, 
on the present occasion ; but I may say, in passing, that a 
new and weighty authority has come forward to refute 
the claims of Buddhism. In a paper in the '' Nineteenth 
Century" (July, 1888), the Bishop of Colombo says: 
" We must distinguish," in reference to Buddhism, 
*' two very different sources of information, only one of 
which I shall speak of as historical. The one source is 
the Tripitaka, or threefold collection of sacred books, 
which forms the canon of Southern Buddhism; these I 
call the books of 250 b. c. 

" The other source is the ^ Biographies of Buddha ' and 
the Lalita Vistara, which are of uncertain date, between 
the first and sixth centuries (a. d.). These last are the 
sources of Arnold's ' Light of Asia.' 

'' We have been led to the only source of history, — the 
Pitakas. The resultant biography of Gautama* shows 
nothing supernatural; and nothing which, in those days, 
was strange. The life of Gautama contains nothing 
more strange than does the life of Shakespeare." 

The Bishop shows conclusively the unhistorical charac- 
ter of much of that material which Sir Edwin Arnold 
has woven into his beautiful poem. As a poet, he had 
an unquestionable right to employ it ; but it behooves all 
serious thinkers to beware how they accept poetry in place 
of history.f 

♦ The name for Buddha, in general use in Ceylon and Burmah. 
t Three Lectures on Buddhism. 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 251 

Dr. E. J. Eitel, who has made a special study of Bud- 
dhism, summarizes his conclusions in these words : — 

" There is not a single Buddhist manuscript that can . 
vie in antiquity and authority with the oldest codices of ^V" 
the Gospels. The most ancient Buddhist classics contain 
but few details of Buddha's life, and none whatever of 
those above-mentioned peculiarly Christian characteris- 
tics. Nearly all the above-given legends, that refer to 
events that happened many centuries before Christ, can- 
not be proved to have been in circulation earlier than the 
fifth or sixth century after Christ." 

Dr. Eitel points to early Nestorian Missions as what 
he calls " the precise source " of these " apparently Chris- 
tian elements." 

That Buddhism borrowed much in subsequent ages 
is incontestable, and that Christianity borrowed some- 
thing is highly probable. Professor Max Miiller has 
shown that Buddha himself has been canonized as a 
Christian Saint, ordered to be worshipped on the 27th 
of November, under the title of St. Josaphat.* 

The fact is that the resemblances between the two 
great religions of the East and West lie far deeper than 
the external habiliment of poetical tradition, or the super- 
ficial analogies of religious orders and religious ritual. 
They are traceable in the general development and prac- 
tical doctrines of both. 

Both are found to pursue a course exactly the reverse 
of that mapped out in a celebrated dictum of Auguste 
Comte; their initial stage was not far removed from 
positivism, and yet both evolve a spiritual universe; one 
burst the bonds of Hindu caste, the other broke down the 
walls of Jewish isolation, and each stretched forth its 
hand to the nations with the offer of a new evangel. 

* " Contemporary Review " for July, 1870. 



252 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Beginning as wide apart in spirit as in geographical situa- 
tion, they have gradually approached each other, so that 
they have come, in the course of ages, to occupy the same 
ground in both senses, and each to lend a tinge to the 
other. 

For the objects of our present inquiry, it matters little 
how inconsistent the Buddhism of one country or of one 
age may be with that of another; what we have to do 
is to estimate its effects. No religion has ever shown 
itself so plastic as that of Buddha, not only chameleon- 
like, taking its hue from its surroundings, but promul- 
gating at different times doctrines contradictory and self- 
destructive. Beginning as a philosophy of self-discipline, 
it developed into a reTTgious^ordt., At the outset profess- 
ing atheisirr pure and simple, in the end it brought forth 
a pantheon of gods ; and, most wonderful of all, raised a 
denier of God's existence to the throne of the Supreme. 
After such changes in doctrine, it is hardly surprising 
that a system, which preferred poverty to riches, and 
deserts to cities, should in later times seize the revenue 
of States and place its mendicant friars on the throne 
of kings. The controversialist, who has to confront Bud- 
dhism as an opposing force, may make the most of its 
contradictions and errors ; but for ourselves, on the pres- 
ent occasion, we have only to inquire whether or not Bud- 
dhism, under any or all of its phases, as seen in China, 
has done good or evil. 

At the present it may be an obstruction, but that does 
not prove that its past influence has been otherwise than 
beneficent. The Western farmer, when he first breaks 
up his prairie lands, finds his plough impeded at every 
step by the strong roots of wild grasses; but he knows 
that it was those grasses, growing up year after year 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 253 

through centuries, that accumulated the rich loam in 
which he plants his corn. 

The mental soil of China is composed of three leading 
elements, which have been commingled and brought into 
interaction in such a way as to present to the superficial 
observer a homogeneous aspect. These are the three re- 
ligions, — Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist. 

Let us find what elements Buddhism has contributed, 
to make it ready for the higher cultivation of our Chris- 
tian epoch. 

The fundamental requisites of all religious teaching are 
two, viz.: — 

I. — A belief in God; i. e., — in some effective method 
of divine government. 

2. — A belief in the immortality of the soul ; i. e., — in a 
future state of being, whose condition is determined by 
our conduct in the present life. 

These cardinal doctrines we find accepted everywhere 
in China. There are, it is true, those who deny them; 
but such are Confucianists, not Buddhists ; — and I do not 
hesitate to affirm that, for the general prevalence of both, 
China is mainly indebted to the agency of Buddhism. 
When, in the first century of our era, its missionaries 
arrived from India, they found a Supreme God recog- 
nized in the books, but practically withdrawn from the 
homage of the masses, because he was considered as too 
exalted to be approached by anyone except the lord of 
the empire. The people took refuge in the worship of 
natural objects and of human heroes; not one of all their 
deities taking any strong hold on their affections, or enter- 
ing deeply into their spiritual life. 

In regard to the hope of a future existence, the state 
of things was not better. The worship of ancestors main- 



i54 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tained a shadowy faith in something like ghosts, but it 
seldom amounted to a potent conviction. The absence 
of such a conviction showed itself in the eagerness with 
which men laid hold on the faint hope held out by Taoist 
alchemy, — that some medicine might be discovered which 
would vanquish death. The few enthusiasts seen on 
mountain tops, seeking for the elLvir vitae, and stretching 
their hands and eyes towards heaven, — were they not 
rather touching proofs of a universal want, than evi- 
dences of any well-grounded faith? 

fit li'as in fact the deep consciousness of a want in both 
respects that rendered the introduction of Buddhism so 
easy. It found an " aching void " in the human heart, 
\and it filled it with such materials as it possessed. 

Instead of their materialistic conceptions, it raised the 
Chinese to a belief in the powers of a spiritual universe 
infinitely more grand than this visible world. In that 
universe, Buddhas and divinities of the next grade, 
called Bodisatwas, held sway, not limited to any hill or 
city, but extending to all places where their devout wor- 
shippers called for succor. Buddha, though in theory 
already passed into the blessedness of an unconscious 
Nirvana, was popularly held to be the actual lord of the 
universe. Bodisatwas were believed to have the forces 
of nature at command, and to be actively engaged in the 
work of blessing mankind. 

The superiority of these Buddhist divinities over those 
which they displaced, consists chiefly in the fact that they 
possess a moral^character. By virtue, they have risen in 
the scale ofT>eing in a progression, bounded only by that 
sublime height on which Buddha sits wrapped in solkary 
contemplation. Their human kindness rendered them at- 
tractive, and the most popular of all is the Goddess of 
Mercy. She holds in her arms an infant child, and 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 255 

stretches a thousand hands to help the needy ; what won- 
der that she is the favorite object of Chinese devotion. 
She is called briefly P'u Soj and, in most parts of the 
empire, that term is employed to express the idea of a 
vigilant and merciful Providence. Providence is also 
commonly ascribed to Buddha. The " blessing " and 
" protection " of Buddha are phrases in familiar use. 
In a set of verses, to which I shall have occasion to refer 
again, the abbot of a monastery in the Western Hills 
ascribes the fruits of the earth to the goodness of 
Buddha.* 

The verses read: — 

" The production of a grain of rice is as great a work as the crea- 
tion of a mountain. 

Had it not been for the power of Buddha, where should we 
have found our food? 

If we sincerely remember how near to us is Buddha, then we 
may dare to accept the nourishment that heaven and earth 
afford." 

Our present inquiry relates to Buddhism in China ; but 
it may not be out of place to indicate that a similar trans- 
formation of the original conception of Buddha has taken 
place in other countries, especially in those that belong to 
the Northern School. In Japan, Amitaba is endowed 
with the attributes of Preserver and Redeemer. In Mon- 
goHa, the same is true of Borhan (a name which I take 
to be derived from Buddha and Arhan) ; and missionary 
translators have not hesitated to accept it as a fitting ex- 
pression for God, in the rendering of our Holy Scrip- 

* The volume from which I copied these and other stanzas is in 
manuscript. It was lent me by the author. 



256 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tures. In Nepaul, Adi-Buddha is adored as the supreme 
and living god. A hymn, which I translate from the 
French* (which in turn is taken from an English trans- 
lation of Hodgson), describes him thus: — 

I. — " In the beginning there was nothing ; all was emptiness, 

and the five elements had no existence. 

Then Adi-Buddha revealed himself under the form of 

a flame of light. 
2. — He is the great Buddha who exists of himself. 
3. — All things that exist in the three worlds have their cause in 

him; he it is who sustains their being. From him, and 

out of his profound meditation, the universe has sprung 

into life. 
4. — He is the combination of all perfections ; the infinite one, 

who has neither bodily members nor passions ! 

All things are his image, yet he has no image. 
5. — The delight of Adi-Buddha is to make happy all sentient 

creatures. 

He tenderly loves those who serve him ; 

His majesty fills the heart with terror; 

He is the consoler of those who suffer." 

Who will deny that this is a noble psalm of praise; 
that the sublime ascriptions which it contains are worthy 
to be laid as an offering at the feet of Jehovah ? 

May we not say that a people who have derived these 
ideas from the teachings of Buddhism appear to be in a 
state of comparative readiness for the message of an 
apostle of the true faith, proclaiming — " Whom, there- 
fore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you " ? 

Let us see if the same kind of preparation is to be dis- 
covered in the notions entertained in regard to the soul. 

In China, prior to the arrival of Buddhism, there ex- 
isted on this subject, as we have said, a painful sense of 
deficiency. 

* Tour du Monde, Voyage au Nepal, 1888. 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 257 

Buddhism came as an evangel of hope, teaching that 
immortaHty is man's inalienable inheritance, and not the 
inheritance of man only, but of every sentient creature; 
that all are connected by the links of an endless chain, 
moving onward in unceasing procession, either on an 
ascending or descending scale ; that the reality of the next 
stage of being is more certain than the existence of the 
material objects by which we are surrounded; that the 
soul is an immaterial essence, which the transformations 
of matter have no power to destroy ; and finally, that the 
weal or woe of the future life depends on the conduct 
of each individual during this present state of probation. 

How thoroughly this teaching has permeated the 
Chinese mind may be seen in the following passage from 
Liu Yen Tsa Tze, one of the most popular text-books em- 
ployed in the schools of Peking. *' The glory and happi- 
ness of the present life are fruits that spring from seeds 
planted in a former state. If the present life is hungry, 
cold, and bitter, the fountain of evil is to be traced to the 
sins of a former state of existence." 

The materializing views of Taoism are condemned (to 
quote only one example) in the following verses from 
another book.* 

** Ye who study the doctrine of Tao, 
And strive to prepare the elixir of immortality, — 
Do you not reflect that the elements of immortality are within 

you? 
Do you not know that the elixir of life is within you ? 
For soul and spirit, they are the root and fountain." 

In the same book, there are verses which represent a 
princess (who became the goddess) as announcing her 

*K'wan Yin Ching, a metrical biography of the goddess of 
mercy. 



258 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

resolution to adopt a religious life, and with many tears 
exhorting her parents to do the same. She says: — 



'* If a man live to a hundred years, his life is as a dream; 
Glory and wealth pass away like a flash of gunpowder. 
I beg my father and mother to give themselves to works of 

piety, 
To worship Buddha, to read the holy books, and move the heart 

of Heaven; 
To store up good works, to confirm your own virtues, 
And escape from a sea of bitterness, — a world of dust and 

turmoil. 
Owing to your good deeds in a former state, you now possess 

the sovereignty of hills and rivers. 
If, standing on your present height, you still strive upward, 
Praying the gods to write your names on the roll of the purple 

mansion, 
You may come to enjoy the blessedness of Heaven, and rise 

above the estate of men." 



I do not, for my present purpose, go into the recondite 
lore of great libraries, but rather draw my proofs from 
manuals of the family and of the common school, in order 
to show what doctrines are actually in possession of the 
popular mind. That they teach the supreme importance 
of a life to come, there is no denying. Their best views 
are vitiated by mixture with the errors of metempsychosis. 
But is not this so far a preparation for receiving a Letter 
hope from Him who hath abolished death and *' brought | 
life and immortality to light through the gospel ? " 

Let us next inquire into its influence in bringing about 
those states of mind which are described as the Christian 
graces. For want of time, I refrain from going into an 
examination of the Buddhist decalogue, or in any other 
way entering into a general comparison of Buddhist and 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 259 

Christian ethics. The side of ethics, with which we have 
,to do at present, is that which looks heavenward; i. e., — 
reHgion in its practical aspect. 

Our Christian ethics, in their religious bearings, are 
beautifully summarized by " Faith, Hope, and Charity." 
Has Buddhism anything answering to these? If it has, 
it differs in that respect from all other pagan religions. 
In the old religions of Greece and Rome, the things signi- 
fied were so utterly unknown that the three words ac- 
quired a new signification in passing into Christian use. 
As for the early religions of China, they have nothing to 
show under the rubrics of Faith, and Hope, though Char- 
ity was emphasized by Confucius. Is it not, then, claim- 
ing for Buddhism a great approximation to our divine 
system to assert that it possesses all three ? 

Faith keeps in view the realities of the unseen world, 
and supplies the place of sight and of reason too, to no 
small extent. The place assigned to it is, as with us, at 
the head of the list. In a publication by a learned priest 
of Ningpo, Faith is called '' the mother of virtues." 

Our abbot of the Western Hills gives it an equally ex- 
alted position; and, like St. James, he connects it with 
" works," as proof of its genuineness. He says : — '' To 
be a Buddhist, faith has always been considered the first 
requisite ; but faith without works is vain." 

Can anything show more clearly than this antithesis 
that the word is employed in a sense identical with its 
Christian usage? 

From this peculiar prominence of the grace of faith, 
it almost follows as a matter of course that the adherents 
of the faith should be called *' believers." We are not, 
therefore, surprised to find the term hsin shih, '* believers," 
in general use. Shan nan hsin nil '' honest men and be- 



26o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

lieving women," is a frequent phrase, which tells its own 
story as to the proportion of believers in the two sexes. 

Hope is a grace which Buddhism makes prominent, 
without having a word for it. Of the emphasis it lays 
on the hope of immortality, I have already spoken in 
treating of that cardinal doctrine. The constant endeav- 
our of a devout Buddhist, is to secure the rewards of thei 
life to come by working and suffering in this present! 
world? In Chinese Buddhism, that which kindles hope 
and quickens effort in the highest degree, is the prospect 
of entrance into the '' happy land; " the " pure or sinless 
land; " the " paradise of the West? " This is the Bud- 
dhist's hope of heaven. 

On the place of charity in the Buddhist scheme, I need 
not dilate. Love to being, in the broadest sense, is en- 
joined by precept; it was exemplified in the life of the 
founder, and it finds expression in every phase of Bud- 
dhist religious life. Compassion is the form which it 
chiefly takes. The loftier form of adoring love for divine 
perfection, as in our Christian system, is less frequent, 
but not wholly wanting. Is it not charity to men that our 
abbot expresses, when he says — *' My desire is to pluck 
every creature that is endowed with feeling out of this 
sea of misery ? " Is it not something very like love to 
God, when he says — " In your walks, meditate on 
Buddha ; call to mind his refulgent person ; at every step, 
pronounce his name, and beware that you deceive not 
your own heart ? " 

It follows, from what we have seen, that Buddhism 
must have made an immense addition to the religious vo- 
cabulary of the Chinese people. For the jargon of its 
Sanskrit prayers, and for a multitude of theological terms, 
imported bodily from India, I have no word of praise or 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 261 

apology; but, within the domain of pure Chinese, it is 
!l safe to affirm that Buddhism has enriched the language, 
as it has enlarged the sphere of popular thought. 

It has given the Chinese such ideas as they possess of 
heaven and hell ; and of spiritual beings, rising in a hier- 
, archy above man, or sinking in moral turpitude below 
I man. It has given them all their familiar terms relating 
I to sin, to good works, to faith, to repentance; and, most 
' important of all, to a righteous retribution, which includes 
the awards of a future life. 

Not one of these words or phrases conveys to the Chi- 
nese the exact idea required by the teachings of Christian- 
ity; yet the first teachers of Christianity, on coming to 
China, seized on these terms as so much material made 
ready to their hand, sprinkled them with holy water, and 
consecrated them to a new use. Matteo Ricci soon re-^^ 
nounced the Buddhist garb ; but no missionary, Papal or \ 
Protestant, has ever abandoned the Buddhist terminology. 
Half the churches in Rome are built of stones taken 
from the temples of Paganism; and some of them, such 
as the Pantheon and the Ara Coeli, continue to be known 
by their old names. So half the doctrines of Christianity 
are introduced to the Chinese in a dress borrowed from i" 
Buddhism. It could not be otherwise; and this fact, 
taken alone, appears almost decisive in favor of the affirm- 
ative side of the question under discussion. 

If the eloquent Saurin is right in asserting that God's 
purpose in bringing Judea under the domination of 
Greece was, by the introduction of the Greek language, 
to provide a more perfect vehicle for the revelations of 
the new dispensation, is it going too far to suggest that 
Buddhism has had a similar mission? Has it not, pre- 
pared a language for the communication of divine truth i! 



262 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Has it not also prepared the mind of the people to receive 
it, by importing a stock of spiritual ideas, and by culti- 
vating their spiritual sense? 

But, however sympathetic may be our mental attitude 
in regard to it, we must admit that its mission is finished, 
and that, for the future, the highest service it can render 
will be to supply a native stock on which to graft the 
vine of Christ. By giving the Chinese an example of a 
foreign creed winning its way and holding its ground in 
spite of opposition, it has prepared them to expect a repe- 
tition of the phenomenon. As Buddhists (and though 
professing to be Confucians, they are nearly all more or 
less tinged with Buddhism) they are taught to believe 
that their present form of faith is not final, and to look 
for a fuller manifestation in an age of higher light. Will 
not this prepare them, when the tide sets in that direction, 
to accept Christianity as the fulfilment of their expec- 
tation ? * 

Sir Monier Williams states the negative features of the 
Buddhist creed in terms not less forcible and explicit. 
" Buddhism," he says, *' has no creator, no creation, no 
original germ of all things, no soul of the world, no per- 
sonal, no impersonal, no supermundane, no antemundane 
principle." 

Of original and classic Buddhism, this is strictly true ; 
and the defects of the root affect more or less all the 
branches. Still it is very instructive to remark how, in 
the Northern Buddhism with which I am dealing, man's 

* Professor Rhys David in Buddhism and Christianity makes 
the following statement: 

" In Buddhism, we have an ethical system, but no law-giver; a 
world without a creator, a salvation without eternal life, and a 
sense of evil, but no conception of pardon, atonement, reconcilia- 
tion, or redemption." 



A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY 263 

religious instincts triumph over the obstacles created by 
an atheistic philosophy, so that Buddhism has become 
pre-eminently the religious discipline of Eastern Asia.* 

* The assumption by Buddhism of a distinctly reHgious charac- 
ter is primarily due to the school of Mahayana, which Eitel de- 
scribes as " a later form of the dogma, — one of the three phases 
of its development, characterized by an excess of transcendental 
speculation, and not known to Southern Buddhism." 

The Buddhists of Japan are beginning to agitate the question 
whether the Mahayana rests in any degree on the authority of 
Sakyamuni. 

How near the Reformed Buddhism of Japan approaches to 
Christianity will be apparent from the following printed state- 
ment given me by a priest, by whom it was drawn up : 

*' Our sect called Shinshiu ' True Doctrine ' teaches the doc- 
trine of help from another. 

" Now what is this help from another? It is the great power 
of Amita Buddha. Amita means ' boundless.' Therefore Amita 
is the chief of the Buddhas. Our sect pays no attention to the 
other Buddhas, but putting faith in Amita expects to escape from 
this miserable world and to enter Paradise in the next life. From 
the time of putting faith in Buddha, we do not need any power 
of self-help — but need only to keep his mercy in heart, and invoke 
his name in order to remember him. 

" We make no difference between priest and layman as concerns 
the way of salvation. The priest is allowed to marry and to eat 
flesh and fish — which is prohibited to the members of the other 
Buddhist sects." 



XV 

THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS IN CHINA 

r those early days when Moses was going to school 
to the priests of Memphis, and when Cecrops had 
not yet landed on the shores of Attica, the civiliza- 
tion of China was crystallized into permanent shape, and 
the national religion consisted of three elements: i. The 
worship of Shang Ti, the Supreme Ruler ; 2. The worship 
of powers supposed to preside over the principal depart- 
ments of material nature; and 3. The worship of deceased 
ancestors. 

The earliest recorded instance of the latter dates back 
to a period anterior to the calling of Abraham; when 
Shun, the son of a blind peasant, was adopted into the 
family of the Emperor Yao and acknowledged as heir to 
the throne, 2300 b. c. 

Of the ceremonial employed on this occasion, we have 
no details ; the statement that the *' concluding rites " were 
performed in the temple of Wen Tsu, the ancestor of 
Yao, is all that the historian has vouchsafed to communi- 
cate. Yet, how much is implied in this laconic record? 

It implies, on the part of Yao, an announcement to the 
spirits of his forefathers of his purpose to efifect a change 
in the line of succession. On the part of Shun, it implies 
a reverential acceptance of Yao's ancestors in place of his 
own, and the assumption in their presence of vows of 
fidelity in the discharge of his high functions. 

264 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 265 

When the Emperor now on the throne, was adopted by 
an Empress Regent as the son of his uncle Hsien Feng, a 
similar ceremony was performed by proxy in the temple 
of the deceased sovereign. On that occasion, a fanatical 
censor, Wu K'o Tu, protested against the affiliation to 
Hsien Feng ; contended that it was doing dishonor to the 
last Emperor T'ung Chih, to leave him without a son; 
and, in order to give emphasis to his remonstrance, he 
sealed it with his blood, sacrificing his life before the 
tomb of the latter sovereign. 

This occurrence, illustrating as it does what took place 
4000 years ago, is of itself sufficient to prove that in the 
China of to-day the worship of ancestors is not a dead 
form, but a living faith. 

Not only is the adoption of an heir to the throne thus 
formally announced to the ancestors of the reigning house ; 
every case of regular succession is solemnly notified by a 
similar ceremonial. 

In the 1 2th century before our era, Wu Wang over- 
turned the house of Shang, and founded the dynasty of 
Chou. In the indictment which, to justify his rebellion, 
he brings against the degenerate occupant of the throne, 
he begins by charging him with neglecting the service of 
Shang Ti and subordinate deities, and even forgetting 
to sacrifice at the altars of his own ancestors. 

In a second manifesto, he refers to his deceased father 
Wen Wang, and adds — '* If I gain the victory, it will not 
be through my own prowess, but through the merits of 
my father. If I am beaten, it will not be from any fault 
in my father, but solely from the want of virtue in me." 

He warns his soldiers that — " if they are brave, they 
will be rewarded publicly in the temple of his ancestors; 
but if cowardly, they will be slain at the altars of the 
earth-gods." 



266 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Such was the place held by the worship of ancestors 
at the dawn of history, along with that of Shang Ti and 
a host of inferior divinities. At the present day, no one 
can visit the magnificent monuments of the Ming Em- 
perors, or witness the vast sums expended on the mausolea 
of the reigning House, without a profound conviction that 
the cult of ancestors has lost nothing of its ancient sanc- 
tity. 

In 1889 the reigning Emperor and the Dowager Em- 
press made a solemn pilgrimage to the tombs of their 
fathers ; the former to report in person his marriage and 
full accession to imperial power, the latter to give account 
of her exercise of delegated authority during her long 
regency. What stronger proof could be required of the 
important position which the worship of ancestors still 
occupies in the religion of the State? 

It is not, however, restricted to the ruling classes. It 
forms the leading element in the religion of the people. 

It is, in fact, the only form of religion which the gov- 
ernment takes the trouble to propagate among its sub- 
jects. 

Every household has somewhere within its doors a 
small shrine, in which are deposited the tablets of ances- 
tors, and of all deceased members of the family who have 
passed the age of infancy. 

Each clan has its ancestral temple, which forms a rally- 
ing point for all who belong to the common stock. In 
such temples, as in the smaller shrines of the household, 
the objects of reverence are not images, but tablets, — slips 
of wood inscribed with the name of the deceased, to- 
gether with the dates of birth and death. In these tablets, 
according to popular belief, dwell the spirits of the dead. 
Before them ascends the smoke of daily incense; and, 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 267 

twice in the month, offerings of fruits and other eatables 
are presented, accompanied by solemn prostrations. 

In some cases, particularly durhig a period of mourn- 
ing, the members of the family salute the dead, morning 
and evening, as they do the living; and on special occa- 
sions, such as a marriage or a funeral, there are religious 
services of a more elaborate character, accompanied some- 
times by feasts and theatrical shows. 

Besides worship in presence of the representative tablet, 
periodical rites are performed at the family cemetery. 
In spring and autumn, when the mildness of the air is 
such as to invite excursions, city families are wont to 
choose a day for visiting the resting places of their dead. 
Clearing away the grass, and covering the tombs with a 
layer of fresh earth, they present offerings and perform 
acts of worship. This done, they pass the rest of the 
day in enjoying the scenery of the country. 

RELATION TO THE SAN CHIAO, OR THREE RELIGIONS. 

Such, in outline, is the system of ancestral worship. It 
constitutes the very heart of the religion of China. The 
Supreme Ruler is too august to be approached by ordi- 
nary mortals. As to other divinities, their worship is in- 
cumbent only on priests or magistrates; but the worship 
of ancestors is obligatory on all. They are the penates 
of every household. To honor them is religion ; to neg- 
lect them the highest impiety. 

Usages of this kind spring as naturally as the grass 
from the graves of the deceased; and in ancient times 
the funeral rites of the Chinese differed little from those 
of other nations. That by which they are justly dis- 
tinguished is that, instead of suffering them to be over- 



268 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

shadowed by polytheism, they alone have shaped their 
offices for the dead into an all-pervading and potent cult 
which moulds the social and spiritual life of every indi- 
vidual in the Empire. 

Spontaneous in its origin, in its developed form it is 
the slow growth of thirty centuries. It was practised in 
the Golden Age of Chinese history, two thousand years 
before the Christian era ; and in the rites of Chou, a thou- 
sand years later, we find it reduced to a precise and com- 
plicated code; but it was not so stereotyped as to be 
incapable of further alteration. It was disfigured by 
grotesque ceremonies, the reproduction of which at 
the present day would be regarded as hardly less 
shocking than the restoration of human sacrifices 
— I allude particularly to that curious arrangement 
by which a solemn act of religion was converted 
into a ridiculous masquerade — young children being 
made to personate their ancestors, and, habited in ghostly 
costume, receiving the homage of their own parents. Nor 
was it then clothed with the imperious authority which it 
now exercises. In the life of Confucius we find recorded 
the remarkable fact that when arrived at manhood he was 
ignorant of the burial-place of his father, who had died 
when he was an infant, and it was not until the death of 
his mother that he took pains to ascertain it. This indi- 
cates a degree of laxity which would not be possible at 
the present day, when semi-annual offerings are required 
to be made at the tombs of ancestors. 

Yet it is to Confucius more than to any other man that 
China is indebted for the strictness with which the rites 
of this worship are now universally observed. Making 
filial piety the corner-stone of his ethical system, and 
only vaguely recognizing the personality of the supreme 
power, whom he styles Viot, or Heaven, he was led to 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 269 

seek in the worship of ancestors for the reHgious sanctions 
required to confirm it. " If," said he, " funeral rites are 
performed with scrupulous care, and remote ancestors 
duly recognized, the virtues of the people will be strength- 
ened." This is a maxim which lies at the foundation of 
the religious polity of the Chinese Empire. 

The more objectionable features in ancestral worship 
are not due to Confucius, and derive no sanction from his 
authority; I mean the transformation of the deceased 
into tutelar divinities; and the absurd doctrine that the 
destinies of the family are determined by the location of 
the family tombs. 

The first of these springs so readily from the human 
heart that it is unnecessary to look for its origin in the 
teachings of any particular school. It is touching to read 
on a tombstone that a mourning family, having laid an 
aged parent in his last resting-place, beseech his spirit to 
hover over them as a protecting power. But the Chinese 
are not so taught by Confucius, who, when interrogated 
as to the survival of the soul, refused to assert that it pos* 
sesses any conscious existence after the death of the body ; 
and, while exhorting to sincerity in sacrifices, went no 
further than to say, '* Sacrifice to the spirits as if they 
were present." 

The other tenet is derived from feng-shid, or geomancy, 
the debasing offshoot of a degenerate Taoism. This false 
science, which bears to geology a relation similar to that 
which astrology bears to astronomy, assumes the existence 
of certain influences connected with the configuration of 
the surface which affect the destinies of the inhabitants 
of any given locality. These must be taken account of 
in selecting the site of a dwelling-house, a school, a shop, 
or even a stable, and especially a burial-place. So strong 
is the conviction on this last point that families who are 



270 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

overtaken by a series of misfortunes are often persuaded 
to exhume the bones of their forefathers, and shift them, 
perhaps more than once, to a new location, in hopes of 
hitting on the focus of auspicious influences. This super- 
stition is even carried into the domain of poUtics ; so that 
the government, on suppressing a rebellious emeute, has 
been known to order the destruction of the family tombs 
of the rebel chief, in order to strike at what is supposed 
to be the fountain-head of the disturbing influence. 

Buddhism has exerted a profound influence on the 
worship of ancestors, strengthening, as it has done, the 
instinctive faith in a future state, and introducing an 
elaborate liturgy for the repose of the departed. 

RELATION TO SOCIAL ORDER. 

" In China filial piety is the bond of social order." 

The Imperial house sets the example in what it regards 
as the highest form of filial duty. Not only are separate 
shrines erected for the ancestors of the reigning family; 
the Emperor, according to immemorial usage, associates 
them with Shang Ti the Supreme Ruler, in the sacrifices 
which, as high-priest of the Empire, he makes at the 
Temple of Heaven. 

The visitor who is fortunate enough to gain access to 
an azure-colored pagoda on the north of the principal 
altar may see there a tablet inscribed with the name of 
Shang Ti occupying the central place of honor, while the 
tablets of ten generations of the reigning family are 
ranged on the right and left. Three of these never set 
foot in China, nor in any proper sense can they be said to 
have occupied the Imperial throne. 

Two of them reigned in Liaotung, over a single prov- 
ince, and one was the chief of a roving tribe in the wilds 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 271 

of Manchuria; yet on the occupation of China by their 
descendants, they were all canonized or raised by Im- 
perial decree to the dignity of Emperor. 

This tendency of the stream of honor to flow upwards 
is peculiar to China. There alone is it possible for a 
distinguished son to' lift his deceased parents out of ob- 
scurity, and to confer on their names the reflected lustre 
of his own rank. 

It is not easy for us to estimate the force of the mo- 
tive which is thus brought to bear on a generous mind 
nurtured under the influence of such traditions. Kuang 
tsimgyao tsu, " Be careful to reflect glory on your fore- 
fathers," is a hortatory formula, addressed alike to the 
soldier on the battle-field and the student in the halls 
of learning. 

If, as President Hayes asserted in a speech at San 
Francisco, '' those who show "the greatest respect for their 
ancestors are most likely to be distinguished by their re- 
gard for posterity," the Chinese ought to excel all men 
in that sentiment, so essential to the well-being of a 
State ; certain it is that their worship of ancestors fosters 
the sentiment in a most effectual manner. 

The man who worships his forefathers, and believes in 
their conscious existence, naturally desires to leave off- 
spring who shall keep the fires burning on the family 
altar, and regale his own spirit with periodical oblations. 
Mencius accordingly lays it down as a maxim that '' of 
the three offences against filial piety, the greatest is to be 
childless " — a dictum which has contributed not a little 
to promote the practice of early marriage, and the con- 
sequent enormous expansion of the population of China. 
Viewed in this latter aspect, the reflex influence of ances- 
tral worship may be considered as a doubtful boon ; but as 
to the underlying sentiment, were it wisely directed to 



272 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

providing for the welfare of coming generations as well as 
to bringing them into existence, its beneficial effects 
would be of inestimable value. 

The worship of ancestors strengthens the ties of kin- 
ship, and binds together those family and tribal groups 
on which the government so much relies for the control 
of its individual subjects. The family temple serves for a 
church, theatre, school-house, council-room, indeed for 
all the varied objects required by the exigencies of a vil- 
lage community. Domains attached to it for the main- 
tenance of the sacrifices are held as common property; 
and glebe-lands are often appended which are devoted to 
the support of needy members of the widely extended 
connection. I have seen a town of twenty-five thousand 
people, all belonging to the same clan, and bearing the 
same family name. A conspicuous edifice near the centre 
bore the name of Shih Tsu Miao, i. e. temple of our first 
ancestor. Here the divergent branches of the family tree 
met in a common root ; and all the citizens, under the 
cloud of incense arising from a common sacrifice, were 
led to feel the oneness of their origin; though separated, 
it might be, by half a millennium. Such a village resem- 
bles the growth of a banyan-tree — the most distant column 
in the living arcade, though resting on a root of its own, 
still maintains a vital connection with the parent stock. 

The following are some of the occasions on which 
formal addresses are made to the spirits of ancestors. 
When a youth dons the cap of manhood, he is taken to 
the ancestral temple, where his father invokes for him 
the guardian care of his forefathers, " that he may be a 
complete man, and not fall below their standard of ex- 
cellence." The rite is extremely impressive, and it would 
lose nothing of its solemnity, if, in lieu of the invocation 
of the dead, the blessing of the living God were invoked. 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 273 

When a son or daughter is betrothed, the parents simply 
notify their ancestors, much as they do their living 
kindred, but without asking for tutelar care. When a 
youth goes to fetch home his bride, the father " reveren- 
tially announces the fact to his ancestors, v^ith offerings 
of fruits and wine." The same is done in case of a bride 
departing for her new home. 

In the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom presents his 
wife to his ancestors as a new member of the family, and 
invokes for her their " paternal blessing." 

In none of the forms connected with funerals is there 
any petition for blessing or protection. The language is 
that of a simple announcement, accompanied by an ex- 
pression of profound sorrow. But in the periodical serv- 
ices at the family cemetery, this objectionable element 
shows itself, the worshipper says — *' We have come to 
sweep your tombs to show our gratitude for your pro- 
tecting care, and now we beseech you to accept our offer- 
ings and make our posterity prosperous and happy." With 
the alteration of a few words, these so-called prayers 
might be reduced to mere expressions of natural affection. 
He who would object to them after such retrenchment, 
would condemn Cowper's pathetic address to his mother's 
picture ? — 

** My mother, when I knew that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? " 

In Hernani, that noble tragedy of Victor Hugo, one of 
the most impressive scenes is an act of worship at the 
tomb of an ancestor. 

Don Carlos, afterwards Charles V.^ on the eve of elec- 



274 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tion to the throne of the German Empire, enters the mau- 
soleum of Charlemagne at Aix la Chapelle, and, throwing 
himself on his knees before the tomb of the great mon- 
arch, he pours out this prayer: — 

*' Pour into my heart something of thy own sublime 
spirit ; speak, for thy son is waiting to hear. Thou dwell- 
est in light; oh, send some rays upon his pathway." 

This, it may be said, is poetry, not religion; while the 
worship of the Chinese is religion, with very little poetry. 

Aside from its social and economic relations, this form 
of worship exerts a religious and moral influence beyond 
any other system of doctrines hitherto known to the Chi- 
nese Empire. In a sceptical world, and through ages not 
favored with that revelation which has " brought life and 
immortality to light," it has kept alive the faith in a future 
life. The orthodox son of Han regards himself as living 
and acting in the sight of his ancestors. He refers his 
conduct to their supposed judgment, and the comfort of 
his dying hour is largely determined by the view he takes 
of the kind of welcome he is likely to receive when he 
meets the shades of his forefathers. 

" How could I look my ancestors in the face if I should 
consent to such a proposition ? " is a reply which many 
an officer has given to a temptation to betray his trust. 
A motive which has such power to deter from baseness 
may also be potent as a stimulus to good; indeed, in re- 
spect to moral efficacy it would appear to be only second 
to that of faith in the presence of an all-seeing Deity. 
How effective it must be may be inferred from the fact 
that a Chinese, bent on wounding his adversary in the 
keenest point, curses, not the obnoxious individual, but his 
ancestors; because respect for them is the deepest of all 
his religious sentiments. 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 275 

RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY. 

In conclusion, the spectacle of a great nation with its 
whole population gathered round the altars of their an- 
cestors, tracing their lineage up to the hundredth genera- 
tion, and recognizing the ties of kindred to the hundredth 
degree, is one that partakes of the sublime. It suggests, 
moreover, two questions of no little interest: i. May there 
not be some feature in the Chinese system which we might 
with advantage engraft on our Western civilization? 2. 
In propagating Christianity in China, what attitude ought 
missionaries to assume towards that venerable institution ? 

If it be objected that a sufficient answer to both is 
found in the tendency of ancestral worship to fetter prog- 
ress by pledging men to the imitation of the past, we 
reply that such an effect is by no means necessary; that 
Chinese conservatism is due to other causes, and that men 
of the present generation may gratefully acknowledge 
their obligations to the past, while conscious that they 
themselves constitute the highest stage in the skyward col- 
umn of our growing humanity. The Vrilya, we are told 
in the instructive romance of Lord Lytton " the Coming 
Race ", with all their advanced ideas, still preserved with 
reverence the portraits of their early ancestors who had 
not yet attained the human shape. 

The question of adopting such an institution is quite 
distinct from that of uprooting it from a soil in which it 
has been prolific of blessings. Is it merely one of the 
many phases of pagan religion, which, however they may 
have subserved the cause of morality in a twilight age, 
must be regarded as purely obstructive in the light of 
Christian day, or may we not recognize in it some ele- 
ment of permanent good, worthy to survive all changes 



276 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

in the national faith? As a matter of fact, all mission- 
ary bodies have taken the former view — except those 
Jesuits who first introduced Christianity to the Chinese 
people. Perceiving unmistakable evidence that filial rev- 
erence had grown into idolatrous devotion, and memorial 
tablets become converted into objects of idolatrous hom- 
age, they have declared war against the entire system. 

It is, I confess, a suspicious circumstance to find the 
Jesuits tolerating the traditional rites, while Dominican 
and Franciscan, Greek and Protestant, have all concurred 
in rejecting them. Yet I cannot bring myself to feel that 
the latter have been wholly right, or the former altogether 
wrong. Had the policy of the Jesuits been sanctioned by 
the Popes, the adherents of the Church of Rome might 
have been spared a century of persecution, and it is prob- 
able that the religion of India might have been supplanted 
by that of Europe ; for nothing has ever aroused such 
active opposition to Christianity as the discovery that it 
stands in irreconcilable antagonism to the \v^orship of an- 
cestors. The decision of the Sovereign Pontiff commit- 
ting his Church to this position reminds us by its effects 
of the unfortunate reply of a Saxon missionary to Radbod, 
the King of Friesland. The King, with one foot in the 
baptismal font, as a last question, asked the missionary 
whether he must think of his ancestors as in heaven or 
in hell. " In hell," was the reply. '* Then I shall go with 
my fathers," exclaimed the King, as he drew back and 
refused the Christian rite. Thousands of Chinese on the 
brink of a Christian profession have been held back by a 
similar motive. 

The question, I admit, is not altogether one of expedi- 
ency. Yet, in view of all our obligations to truth and 
righteousness, there appears to me to be no necessity for 
placing them in this cruel dilemma. The idolatrous ele- 



THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 277 

tnents involved in ancestral worship are, as we have seen, 
excrescences, not of the essence of the system. Why not 
prune them off and retain all that is good and beautiful 
in the institution? A tablet inscribed with a name and 
a date is in itself a simple memorial not more dangerous 
than the urns of ashes which cremationists are supposed 
to preserve in their dwellings, and not half so much so as 
pictures and statues; why should the native convert be 
required to surrender or destroy it? The semi-annual 
visit to the family cemetery is a becoming act of respect 
to the dead : why should that be forbidden ? As to offer- 
ings of meats and drinks, why should they — or why should 
they not — be replaced by bouquets of flowers, or the peri- 
odical planting of flower-seeds and flowering shrubs? 
Even the act of prostration before the tomb or tablet can 
hardly be regarded as objectionable in a country where 
children are required to kneel before their living parents. 
Two things excite my poignant grief when I look back to 
the mistakes of the past — one, the exclusion of a church 
member for complying with the ordinary marriage cere- 
mony and kneeling before a strip of paper inscribed with 
the five objects of veneration, the other insisting on 
the surrender of ancestral tablets as a proof of sincerity 
on the part of an applicant for baptism. I had no right 
to impose such a test in either case. 

That which is really objectionable is geomancy and the 
invocation of departed spirits. The simplest ideas of 
science are sufficient to dispel the one form of supersti- 
tion, and a very small amount of religious knowledge sup- 
plies an effectual antidote to the other. The worsliip of 
ancestors would thus be restored to the state in which 
Confucius left it, or rather to that in which he himself 
practised it — as merely a system of commemorative rites. 

Whatever party takes this position will have an im- 



278 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

mense advantage in the competition for converts. Mis- 
sionaries may never accept it. But the native Church 
cannot be expected to follow servilely in the footsteps of 
its foreign leaders. When the higher classes come to 
embrace Christianity in great numbers, they will readily 
leave behind them their Buddhism and their Taoism ; but 
the worship of ancestors they will never consent to 
abandon, though they may submit to some such modifi- 
cations as those which I have endeavored to indicate. 



BOOK IV 

Education in China 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 

7. Influence on national character 

THE interest of the inquiry on which we are about 
to enter is based on the assumption that differ- 
ences of national character are mainly due to 
the influence of education. This we conceive to be true, 
except in extreme cases, such as those of the inhabitants 
of torrid or frigid regions, where everything succumbs 
to the tyranny of physical forces. In such situations 
climate shapes education, as, according to Montesquieu, 
it determines morals and dictates laws. But in milder 
latitudes the difference of physical surroundings is an 

* This chapter was first published in 1877 as a pamphlet, by 
the United States Bureau of Education. The following letter 
of the late Mr. Avery, United States Minister to China, may 
serve to explain its origin: 

" To the Commissioner of Education: 

" Sir, — Before my departure for China, I received from you 
a request to secure for use by your Bureau an accurate and full 
statement of the methods of education in China, and ' the rela- 
tion of the methods to the failure of their civilization.' 

" On my arrival at Peking, bearing your request in mind, I 
was confirmed in the opinion entertained before, that to no one 
else could I apply for the information desired with so much 
propriety as to Dr. W. A. P. Martin, our fellow-countryman, 
president of the Imperial College for Western Science at Pe- 
king, whose long residence in China, scholarly knowledge of 

281 



282 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

almost inappreciable element in the formation of charac- 
ter in comparison with influences of an intellectual and 
moral kind. Much, for example, is said about the in- 
spiration of mountain scenery — an inspiration felt most 
sensibly, if not most effectively, by those who see the 
mountains least frequently; but, as John Foster remarks, 
the character of a lad brought up at the foot of the Alps 
is a thousandfold more affected by the companions with 
whom he associates than by the mountains that rear their 
heads above his dwelling. 

The peculiar character of the Chinese — for they have 
a character which is one and distinct — is not to be ac- 
counted for by their residence in great plains, for half 
the empire is mountainous. Neither is it to be ascribed 
to their rice diet, as rice is a luxury in which few of the 
northern population are able to indulge. Still less is it 
to be referred to the influence of climate, for they spread 
over a broad belt in their own country, emigrate in all 
directions, and flourish in every zone. It is not even ex- 
plained by the unity and persistency of an original type, 
for in their earlier career they absorbed and assimilated 
several other races, while history shows that at different 
epochs their own character has undergone remarkable 

Chinese literature, and familiar acquaintance with native methods 
of education must be well known to you. 

" Dr. Martin, at my solicitation, agreed to furnish a paper on 
the subject you indicated, which I have just received from his 
hands, and now forward to you through the courtesy of the 
State Department. I scarcely need add that you will find it 
alike interesting and valuable. 

" I am, sir, 

" Your obedient servant, 

** Benj. p. Avery. 
" Hon. John Eaton, 
" Commissioner of Education." 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 283 

changes. The true secret of this phenomenon is the 
presence of an agency which, under our own eyes, has 
shown itself sufficiently powerful to transform the turbu- 
lent nomadic Manchu into the most Chinese of the in- 
habitants of the Middle Kingdom. The general name 
for that agency, which includes a thousand elements, is 
education. It is education that has imparted a uniform 
stamp to the Chinese under every variety of physical 
condition; just as the successive sheets of paper applied 
to an engraving bring away, substantially, the same im- 
pression, notwithstanding differences in the quality of 
the material. 

In this wide sense we shall not attempt to treat the 
subject, though it may not be out of place to remark that 
the Chinese themselves employ a word which answers to 
education with a similar latitude. They say, for instance, 
that the education of a child begins before its birth. The 
women of ancient times, say they, in every movement had 
regard to its effect on the character of their offspring. 
This they denominate chiao, reminding us of what Goe- 
the tells us in his autobiography of certain antecedents 
which had their effect in imparting to him 

" That concord of harmonious powers 
Which forms the soul of happiness." 

All this, whatever its value, belongs to physical discipline. 
We shall not go so far back in the history of our typical 
Chinese, but, confining ourselves strictly to the depart- 
ment of intellectual influences, take him at the time when 
the young idea first begins to shoot, and trace him 
through the several stages of his development until he 
emerges a full-fledged Academician.* 

* For an account of the Imperial Hanlin Academy, see 
chapter III. 



284 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

//. Home education 

With us the family is the first school. Not only is it 
here that we make the most important of our linguistic 
acquirements, but with parents who are themselves culti- 
vated there is generally a persistent effort to stimulate 
the mental growth of their offspring, to develop reason, 
form taste, and invigorate the memory. 

In many instances parental vanity applies a spur where 
the curb ought to be employed, and a sickly precocity is 
the result; but in general a judicious stimulus addressed 
to the mind is no detriment to the body, and it is doubt- 
less to the difference of domestic training rather than to 
race that we are to ascribe the early awaking of the men- 
tal powers of European children as compared with those 
of China. The Chinese have, it is true, their stories of 
infant precocity — their Barretiers and Chattertons. They 
tell of Li Mu, who, at the age of seven, was thought 
worthy of the degree of Chin Shih, or the literary 
doctorate, and of Hsie Chin, the '' divine child," 
who, at the age of ten, composed a volume of poems, 
still in use as a juvenile text-book. But these are not 
merely exceptions ; they are exceptions of rarer occur- 
rence than among us. 

Chinese children do not get their hands and feet as 
soon as ours, because, in the first months of their exist- 
ence, they are tightly swathed and afterwards overloaded 
with cumbrous garments. The reason for their tardier 
mental development is quite analogous. European chil- 
dren exhibit more thought at five than Chinese children 
at twice that age. This is not a partial judgment, nor is 
the fact to be accounted for by a difference of race; for 
in mental capacity the Chinese are, in my opinion, not 
inferior to the " most favored nation." Deprive our 
nurseries of those speaking pictures that say so much to 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 285 

the infant eye; of infant poems, such as those of Watts 
and Barbauld; of the sweet music that impresses those 
poems on the infant mind ; more than all, take away those 
Bible stories and scraps of history which excite a thirst 
for the books that contain them, and what a check upon 
mental growth, what a deduction from the happiness of 
childhood ! With us the dawn of knowledge precedes the 
use of books, as the rays of morning, refracted by the 
atmosphere and glowing with rosy hues, anticipate the 
rising of the sun. In China there is no such accommo- 
dating medium, no such blushing aurora. The language 
of the fireside is not the language of the books. 

Mothers and nurses are not taught to read; nor are 
fathers less inclined than with us to leave the work of 
instruction to be begun by the professional teacher. This 
they are the more disposed to do, as an ancient usage * 
prohibits a parent being the instructor of his own chil- 
dren; still some fathers, yielding to better instincts, do 
take a pride in teaching their infant sons; and some 
mothers, whose exceptional culture makes them shine 
like stars in the night of female ignorance, have imparted 
to their children the first impulse in a literary career. 

How many of those who have obtained seats on the 
literary Olympus were favored with such early advan- 
tages it is impossible to ascertain. That the number is 
considerable, we cannot doubt. We remember hearing of 
two scholars in Chekiang who were not only taught the 
mechanical art of writing, but the higher art of compo- 
sition, by an educated mother, both of them winning the 
honors of the Academy. 

As another instance of the same kind, the Memoirs of 
the Academy embalm the memory of such a noble mother 
along with the name of her illustrious son ; and the 

* " They exchanged their sons for education," says an old book. 



286 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Emperor Ch'Ien Lung, with vermilion pencil, celebrates 
the talents of the one and the virtues of the other. 

The Emperor says of Chien Chen Chen, " He drew his 
learning from a hidden source, a virtuous mother impart- 
ing to him her classic lore." In the prose obituary pre- 
fixed to the verses, his Majesty says, '* Chlen's mother. 
Lady Chen, was skilled in ornamental writing. In his 
boyhood it was she who inspired and directed his studies. 
He had a painting which represented his mother holding 
a distaff and at the same time explaining to him the 
classic page. I admired it, and inscribed on it a com- 
plimentary verse " — A graceful tribute from an exalted 
hand, worth more, in the estimation of the Chinese, than 
all the marble or granite that might be heaped upon her 
sepulchre. 

///. Commencement of school life 

In general, however, a Chinese home is not a hot-bed 
for the development of mind. Nature is left to take her 
own time, and the child vegetates until he completes 
his seventh or eighth year. The almanac is then con- 
sulted, and a lucky day chosen for inducting the lad into 
a life of study. Clad in festal robe, with tasselled cap, 
and looking a mandarin in small, he sets out for the 
village school, his face beaming with the happy assur- 
ance that all the stars are shedding kindly influence, 
and his friends predicting that he will end his career 
in the Imperial Academy. On entering the room, he per- 
forms two acts of worship : the first is to prostrate him- 
self before a picture of the Great Sage, who is venerated 
as the fountain of wisdom, but is not supposed to exercise 
over his votaries anything like a tutelar supervision. The 
second is to salute with the same forms^ and almost equal 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 287 

reverence, the teacher who is to guide his inexperienced 
feet in the pathway to knowledge. In no country is the 
office of teacher more revered. Not only is the living 
instructor saluted with forms of profoundest respect, 
but the very name of teacher, taken in the abstract, is an 
object of almost idolatrous homage. On certain occa- 
sions it is inscribed on a tablet in connection with the 
characters for heaven, earth, prince, and parents, as one 
of the five chief objects of veneration, and worshipped 
with solemn rites. This is a relic of the primitive period, 
when books were few and the student dependent for 
everything on the oral teaching of his sapient master. 
In those days, in Eastern as well as Western Asia and 
Greece, schools were peripatetic, or (as Jeremy Taylor 
says of the Church in his time) ambulatory. Disciples 
were wont to attend their master by day and night, and 
follow him on his peregrinations from State to State, in 
order to catch and treasure up his most casual discourses. 

As to the pursuit of knowledge, they were at a great 
disadvantage compared with modern students, whose 
libraries contain books by the thousand, while their living 
teachers are counted by the score Yet the student life 
of those days was not without its compensating circum- 
stances. Practical morality, the formation of character, 
was the great object, intellectual discipline being deemed 
subordinate; and in such a state of society physical cul- 
ture was, of course, not neglected. The personal char- 
acter of the teacher made a profound impression on his 
pupils, inspiring them with ardor in the pursuit of virtue ; 
while the necessity of learning by question and answer 
excited a spirit of inquiry and favored originality of 
thought. But now all this is changed, and the names and 
forms continue without the reality. 

A man who never had a dozen thoughts in all his Hfe 



288 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

sits in the seat of the philosophers and receives with 
solemn ceremony the homage of his disciples. And why 
not? For every step in the process of teaching is fixed 
by unalterable usage. So much is this the case that in 
describing one school I describe all, and in tracing the 
steps of one student I point out the course of all; for 
in China there are no new methods or short roads. 

In other countries, a teacher, even in the primary 
course, finds room for tact and originality. In those 
who dislike study a love of it is to be inspired by making 
" knowledge pleasant to the taste," and the dull appre- 
hension is to be awakened by striking and apt illustra- 
tions ; while, to the eager and industrious, " steps to 
Parnassus " are, if not made easy, at least to be pointed 
out so clearly that they shall waste no strength in climb- 
ing by wrong paths. In China there is nothing of the 
kind. The land of uniformity, all processes in arts and 
letters are as much fixed by universal custom as is the cut 
of their garments or the mode of wearing their hair. 
The pupils all tread the path trodden by their ancestors 
of a thousand years ago, nor has it grown smoother 
by the attrition of so many feet. 

IV. Stages of study 

The undergraduate course may be divided into three 
stages, in each of which there are two leading studies : 

In the first, the occupations of the student are com- 
mitting to memory (not reading) the canonical books 
and writing an infinitude of diversely formed characters 
as a manual exercise. 

In the second, they are the translation of his text- 
books (i. e. reading), and lessons in composition. 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 289 

In the third, they are belles-lettres and the composition 
of essays. 

Nothing could be more dreary than the labors of the 
first stage. The pupil comes to school, as one of his 
books tells him, '' a rough gem, that requires grind- 
ing;" but the process is slow and painful. His books 
are in a dead language, for in every part of the Empire 
the style of literary composition is so far removed from 
that of the vernacular speech that books, when read 
aloud, are unintelligible even to the ear of the educated, 
and the sounds of their characters convey absolutely no 
meaning to the mind of a beginner. Nor, as a general 
thing, is any effort made to give them Hfe by imparting 
glimpses of their signification. The whole of this first 
stage is a dead lift of memory, unalleviated by the 
exercise of any other faculty. It is something like 
what we should have in our Western schools if our youth 
were restricted to the study of Latin as their sole occu- 
pation, and required to stow away in their memory the 
contents of the principal classics before learning a word 
of their meaning. 

The whole of the Four Books and the greater part of 
the Five Classics are usually gone through in this 
manner, four or five years being allotted to the cheerless 
task. During all this time the mind has not been enriched 
by a single idea. To get words at the tongue's end and 
characters at the pencil's point is the sole object of this 
initial discipline. It would seem, indeed, as if the wise 
ancients who devised it had dreaded nothing so much as 
early development, and, like prudent horticulturists, re- 
sorted to this method for the purpose of heaping snow 
and ice around the roots of the young plant to guard 
against its premature blossoming. All the arrangements 



290 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

of the system are admirably adapted to form a safeguard 
against precocity. Even the stimulus of companionship 
in study is usually denied, the advantages resulting from 
the formation of classes being as little appreciated as 
those of other labor-saving machinery. Each pupil reads 
and writes alone, the penalty for failure being so many 
blows with the ferule or kneeling for so many minutes 
on the rough brick pavement which serves for a floor. 

At this period fear is the strongest motive addressed to 
the' mind of the scholar ; nor is it easy to say how large a 
share this stem discipline has in giving him his first 
lesson in political duty — viz., that of unquestioning sub- 
mission — and in rendering him cringing and pliant to- 
wards official superiors. Those sallies of innocent humor 
and venial mischief so common in Western schools are 
rarely witnessed in China. 

A practical joke in which the scholars indulged at the 
expense of their teacher I have seen represented in a 
picture, but never in real life. This picture, the most 
graphic I ever saw from a Chinese pencil, adorns the 
walls of a monastery at the Western Hills, near Peking. 
It represents a village school, the master asleep in his 
chair and the pupils playing various pranks, the least of 
which, if the tyrant should happen to awake, would 
bring down his terrible baton. But, notwithstanding the 
danger to which they expose themselves, two of the 
young unterrified stand behind the throne, threatening 
to awake the sleeper by tickling his ear with the tail of a 
scorpion. 

So foreign, indeed, is this scene to the habits of 
Chinese schoolboys that I feel compelled to take it in a 
mystic rather than a literal signification. The master 
is reason, the boys are the passions, and the scorpion con- 
science. If passion gets at the ear of the soul while 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 291 

reason sleeps, the stings of conscience are sure to follow 
— those 

" Pangs that pay joy's spendthrift thrill 
With bitter usury." 

Thus understood, it conveys a moral alike worthy of 
Christian or Buddhist ethics. 

Severity is accounted the first virtue in a pedagogue; 
and its opposite is not kindness, but negligence. In 
family schools, where the teacher is well watched, he is 
reasonably diligent and sufficiently severe to satisfy the 
most exacting of his patrons. In others, and particularly 
in charity-schools, the portrait of Squeers in Nicholas 
Nickleby would be no caricature. With modifications 
and improvements in the curriculum, a teacher has noth- 
ing to do. His business is to keep the mill going, and 
the time-honored argument a posteriori is the only per- 
suasion he cares to appeal to. 

This arctic winter of monotonous toil once passed, a 
more auspicious season dawns on the youthful under- 
standing. The key of the Cabala which he has been so 
long and so blindly acquiring is put into his hands. He 
is initiated in the translation and exposition of those 
sacred books which he had previously stored away in his 
memory, as if apprehensive lest another tyrant of Chin 
might attempt their destruction. The light, however, 
is let in but sparingly, as it were, through chinks and 
rifts in the long dark passage. A simple character here 
and there is explained, and then, it may be after the lapse 
of a year or two, the teacher proceeds to the explication 
of entire sentences. Now for the first time the mind of 
the student begins to take in the thoughts of those he 
has been taught to regard as the oracles of wisdom. His 
dormant faculties wake into sudden life, and, as it would 



292 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

seem, unfold the more rapidly in consequence of their 
protracted hibernation. To him it is like 

*' The glorious hour when spring goes forth 
O'er the bleak mountains of the shadowy north, 
And with one radiant glance, one magic breath. 
Wakes all things lovely from the sleep of death." 

The value of this exercise can hardly be overestimated. 
When judiciously employed, it does for the Chinese what 
translation into and out of the dead languages of the 
West does for us. It calls into play memory, judgment, 
taste, and gives him a command of his own vernacular 
which, it is safe to assert, he would never acquire in any 
other way. Yet even here I am not able to bestow un- 
qualified commendation. This portion of the course 
is rendered too easy ; as much too easy as the preceding is 
too difficult. Instead of requiring a lad, dictionary in 
hand, to quarry out the meaning of his author, the teacher 
reads the lesson for him, and demands of him nothing 
more than a faithful reproduction of that which he has 
received; memory again, sheer memory! Desirable as 
this method might be for beginners, when continued, as 
the Chinese do, through the whole course, it has the 
inevitable effect of impairing independence of judgment 
and fertility of invention — qualities for which Chinese 
scholars are by no means remarkable, and for the de- 
ficiency of which they are, no doubt, indebted to this error 
of schoolroom discipline. 

Simultaneously with a translation the student is initi- 
ated in the art of composition — an art which, in any lan- 
guage, yields to nothing but practice. In Chinese it is be- 
set with difficulties of a peculiar kind. In the majority of 
cultivated languages the syntax is governed by rules, 
while inflections, like mortise and tenon, facilitate the 
structure of the sentence. 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 293 

Not so in this most primitive form of human speech. 
Verbs and nouns are undistinguished by any difference 
of form, the verb having no voice, mood, or tense, and 
the noun neither gender, number, nor case. Collo- 
cation is everything; it creates the parts of speech and 
determines the signification of characters. The very 
simplicity of the linguistic structure thus proves a source 
of difficulty, preventing the formation of any such sys- 
tems of grammatical rules as abound in most inflected 
languages, and throwing the burden of acquisition on 
the imitative faculty ; the problem being, not the erection 
of a fabric from parts which are adjusted and marked, 
but the building of an arch with cobble-stones. 

If these uniform, unclassified atoms were indifferent 
to position, the labor of arrangement would be nothing, 
and style impossible. But most of them appear to be 
endowed with a kind of mysterious polarity which con- 
trols their collocation, and renders them incapable of com- 
panionship except with certain characters, the choice of 
which would seem to be altogether arbitrary. The origin 
of this peculiarity is not difficult to discover. In this, as 
in other things among the Chinese, usage has become 
law. Combinations which were accidental or optional 
with the model writers of antiquity, and even their errors, 
have, to their imitative posterity, become the jus et norma 
loquendi. Free to move upon each other when the lan- 
guage was young and in a fluid state, its elements have 
now become crystallized into invariable forms. To 
master this pre-established harmony without the aid of 
rules is the fruit of practice and the labor of years. 

The first step in composition is the yoking together 
of double characters. The second is the reduplication of 
these binary compounds and the construction of parallels 
— an idea which runs so completely through the whole of 



294 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Chinese literature that the mind of the student requires 
to be imbued with it at the very outset. This is the way 
he begins : The teacher writes ** Wind blows," the pupil 
adds *' Rain falls ; " the teacher writes '' Rivers are long," 
the pupil adds " Seas are deep " or '' Mountains are 
high," etc. 

From the simple subject and predicate, which in their 
rude grammar they describe as " dead " and " Hving " 
characters, the teacher conducts his pupil to more com- 
plex forms, in which qualifying words and phrases are 
introduced. He gives as a model some such phrase as 
" The Emperor's grace is vast as heaven and earth," and 
the lad matches it by " The sovereign's favor is profound 
as lake and sea." These couplets often contain two prop- 
ositions in each member, accompanied by all the usual 
modifying terms ; and so exact is the symmetry required 
by the rules of the art that not only must noun, verb, 
adjective, and particle respond to each other with scrupu- 
lous exactness, but the very tones of the characters are 
adjusted to each other with the precision of music. 

Begun with the first strokes of his untaught pencil, 
the student, whatever his proficiency, never gets beyond 
the construction of parallels. When he becomes a mem- 
ber of the Institute or a minister of the Imperial Cabinet, 
at classic festivals and social entertainments, the composi- 
tion of impromptu couplets, formed on the old model, 
constitutes a favorite pastime. Reflecting a poetic image 
from every syllable, or concealing the keen point of a 
cutting epigram, they afford a fine vehicle for sallies of 
wit ; and poetical contests such as that of Meliboeus and 
Menalcas are in China matters of daily occurrence. If 
a present is to be given, on the occasion of a marriage, 
a birthday, or any other remarkable occasion, nothing 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 295 

is deemed so elegant or acceptable as a pair of scrolls 
inscribed with a complimentary distich. 

When the novice is sufficiently exercised in the 
" parallels " for the idea of symmetry to have become an 
instinct, he is permitted to advance to other species of 
composition which afford freer scope for his faculties. 
Such are the shou fieh in which a single thought is ex- 
panded in simple language; the hm, the formal dis- 
cussion of a subject more or less extended, and epistles 
addressed to imaginary persons and adapted to all con- 
ceivable circumstances. In these last, the forms of the 
" complete letter-writer " are copied with too much ser- 
vility; but in the other two, substance being deemed of 
more consequence than form, the new-fledged thought is 
permitted to essay its powers and to expatiate with but 
little restraint. 

In the third stage, composition is the leading object, 
reading being wholly subsidiary. It takes, for the most 
part, the artificial form of verse, and of a kind of prose 
called zven chang, which is, if possible, still more arti- 
ficial. The reading required embraces mainly rhetorical 
models and sundry anthologies. History is studied, but 
only that of China, and that only in compends; not for 
its lessons of wisdom, but for the sake of the allusions 
with which it enables a writer to embellish classic essays. 
The same may be said of other studies; knowledge and 
mental discipline are at a discount, and style at a pre- 
mium. The goal of the long course, the flower and fruit 
of the whole system, is the zven chang; for this alone 
can insure success in the public examinations for the civil 
service, in which students begin to adventure soon after 
entering on the third stage of their preparatory course. 

These examinations we reserve for subsequent consid- 



296 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

eration, and in that connection we shall notice the wen 
chang more at length. We may, however, remark in 
passing that to propose such an end as the permanent 
object of pursuit must of necessity have the effect of 
rendering education superficial. In our own universities 
surface is aimed at rather than depth ; but what, we may 
ask, besides an empty glitter, would remain if none of 
our students aspired to anything better than to become 
popular newspaper-writers? Yet successful essayists 
and penny-a-liners require as a preparation for their 
functions a substratum of solid information. They have 
to exert themselves to keep abreast of an age in which 
great facts and great thoughts vibrate instantaneously 
throughout a hemisphere. But the idea of progressive 
knowledge is alien to the nature of the wen chang. A 
juster parallel for the intense and fruitless concentra- 
tion of energy on this species of composition is the 
passion for Latin verse which was dominant in our halls 
of learning until dethroned by the rise of modem science. 

V. Grade of schools 

The division of the undergraduate course into the 
three stages which we have described gives rise to three 
classes of schools; the primary, in which little is at- 
tended to beyond memoriter recitation and imitative 
chirography; the middle, in which the canonical books 
are expounded ; and the classical, in which composition 
is the leading exercise. Not unfrequently all three de- 
partments are embraced in one and the same school ; and 
still more frequently the single department professed 
is so neglected as to render it utterly abortive for any 
useful purpose. This, as we have elsewhere intimated, is 
particularly the case with what are called public schools. 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 297 

National schools there are none, with the exception of 
those at the capital for the education of the Bannermen, 
originally established on a liberal scale, but now so 
neglected that they can scarcely be reckoned among 
existing institutions. 

A further exception may be made in favor of schools 
opened in various places by provincial officers for special 
purposes; but it is still true that China has nothing 
approaching to a system of common schools designed to 
diffuse among the masses the blessings of a popular edu- 
cation. Indeed, education is systematically left to 
private enterprise and public charity; the government 
contenting itself with gathering the choicest fruits and 
encouraging production by suitable rewards. A govern- 
ment that does this cannot be accused of neglecting the 
interests of education, though the beneficial influence of 
such patronage seldom penetrates to the lower strata of 
society. 

Even higher institutions, those that bear the name of 
colleges, are, for the most part, left to shift for them- 
selves on the same principle. Such colleges differ little 
from schools of the middle and higher class, except in 
the number of professors and students. The professors, 
however numerous, teach nothing but the Chinese lan- 
guage, and the students, however long they may remain 
in the institution, study nothing but the Chinese lan- 
guage. Colleges in the modern sense, as institutions in 
which the several sciences are taught by men who are 
specially expert, are, as yet, almost unknown. But there 
is reason to believe that the government will soon per- 
ceive the necessity of supplying its people with the means 
of a higher, broader culture than they can derive from 
the grammar and rhetoric of their own language. 

In establishing and contributing to the support of 



298 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

schools, the gentry are exceedingly liberal; but they are 
not always careful to see that their schools are conducted 
in an efficient manner. In China nothing flourishes 
without the stimulus of private interest. Accordingly, 
all who can afford to do so, endeavour to employ private 
instructors for their own famiHes; and where a single 
family is unable to meet the expense, two or three of 
the same clan or family name are accustomed to club 
together for that object. 

Efforts for the promotion of education are specially 
encouraged by enlightened magistrates. Recently, over 
three hundred new schools were reported as opened in 
one department of the Province of Canton as the result 
of official influence, but not at government expense. 
The Emperor, too, has a way of bringing his influence to 
bear on this object without drawing a farthing from 
his exchequer, I shall mention three instances by way of 
illustration. 

Last year, in Shantung, a man of literary standing 
contributed four acres of ground for the establishment 
of a village school. The governor recommended him 
to the notice of the Emperor, and his Majesty conferred 
on him the titular rank of professor in the Kuo Tze Chien, 
or Confucian College. 

Three or four years ago, in the Province of Hupei, a 
retired officer of the grade of Taotai, or Intendant of Cir- 
cuit, contributed twenty thousand taels for the endow- 
ment of a college at Wu Chang. The Viceroy Li Plan 
Chang reporting to the throne this act of munificence, 
the Chinese Peabody was rewarded by the privilege of 
wearing a red button instead of a blue one, and inscribing 
on his card the title of Provincial Judge. 

The third instance is that of a college in Kwei Lin Fu, 
the capital of Kuangsi. Falling into decay and ruin 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 299 

during the long years of the Taiping rebellion, the gentry, 
on the return of peace, raised contributions, repaired the 
building, and started it again in successful operation. The 
governor solicits on behalf of these public-spirited citi- 
zens some marks of the Imperial approbation; and his 
Majesty sends them a laudatory inscription written by 
the elegant pencils of the Hanlin. 

But private effort, however stimulated, is utterly inade- 
quate to the wants of the public. In Western countries 
the enormous exertions of religious societies, prompted 
as they are by pious zeal enhanced by sectarian rivalry, 
have always fallen short of the educational necessities of 
the masses. It is well understood that no system of 
schools can ever succeed in reaching all classes of the 
people unless it has its roots in the national revenue. 

In China, what with the unavoidable limitation of 
private effort and the deplorable inefficiency of charity- 
schools, but a small fraction of the youth have the ad- 
vantages of the most elementary education brought 
within their reach. 

I do not here speak of the almost total absence of 
schools for girls, for against these, Chinese are prin- 
cipled. The government, having no demand for the 
services of women in official posts, makes no provision for 
their education ;and popular opinion regards reading and 
writing as dangerous arts in female hands. If a woman, 
however, by chance, emerging from the shaded hemi- 
sphere to which social prejudices have consigned her 
(si qua fata aspera rmnpat), vindicates for herself a po- 
sition among historians, poets, or scholars, she never fails 
to be greeted with even more than her proper share of 
public admiration. Such instances induce indulgent 
fathers now and then to cultivate the talents of a clever 
daughter, and occasionally neighborhood schools for the 



300 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

benefit of girls are to be met with ; but the Chinese people 
have yet to learn that the best provision they could make 
for the primary education of their sons would be to edu- 
cate the mothers, and that the education of the mothers 
could not fail to improve the intellectual character of 
their offspring. But even for the more favored sex the 
facilities for obtaining an education are sadly deficient; 
only a small percentage of the youth attend school, and, 
owing to the absurd method which we have described, 
few of them advance far enough to be initiated into the 
mysteries of ideography. 

On this subject a false impression has gone abroad. 
We hear it asserted that ** education is universal in 
China ; even coolies are taught to read and write." In one 
sense this is true, but not as we understand the terms 
" reading and writing." In the alphabetical vernaculars 
of the West the ability to read and write implies the 
ability to express one's thoughts by the pen, and to grasp 
the thoughts of others when so expressed. In Chinese, 
and especially in the classical or book language, it im- 
plies nothing of the sort. A shopkeeper may be able to 
write the numbers and keep accounts without being able 
to write anything else ; and a lad who has attended school 
for several years will pronounce the characters of an 
ordinary book with faultless precision, yet not com- 
prehend the meaning of a single sentence. Of those 
who can read understandingly (and nothing else ought 
to be called reading), the proportion is greater in towns 
than in rural districts. But striking an average, it does 
not, according to my observation, exceed one in twenty 
for the male sex and one in ten thousand for the female 
— rather a humiliating exhibit for a country which has 
maintained for centuries such a magnificent institution 
as the Hanlin Academy. 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 301 

With all due allowance for the want of statistical ac- 
curacy where no statistics are obtainable, compare this 
with the educational statistics of the United States as 
given in the census of 1870. Taking the country as a 
whole, the ratio of illiteracy among persons over ten 
years of age is i in 6; taking the Northern States alone, 
the ratio is 57 to 1,000, or about i in 18.* 

VI. Government agency 

To some it may be a matter of surprise that popular 
education is left to take care of itself in a country where 
letters are held sacred and their inventor enrolled among 
the gods; to others it may appear equally strange that 
mental cultivation is so extensively diffused, considering 
the cumbrous vehicle employed for the transmission of 
thought and the enormous difficulty of getting com- 
mand of it. Both phenomena find their solution in the 
fact that the government does not value education for its 
own sake, but regards it as means to an end. The great 
end is the repose of the State; the instruments for se- 
curing it are able officers, and education is the means for 
preparing them for the discharge of their duties. This 
done, an adequate supply pf disciplined agents once se- 
cured, the education of the people ceases to be an object. 
The repose of the State, one of the ancient philosophers 
tells us, might be assured by the opposite process : '' Fill 
the people's bellies and empty their minds ; cause that 
they neither know nor desire anything, and you have the 
secret of a tranquil government." Such is the advice of 
Laotze, which I am inclined to take as an utterance of 
Socratic irony rather than Machiavelian malice. So far 
from subscribing to this sentiment in its literal import, 
the Chinese government holds its officers responsible for 

* Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1871. 



302 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the instruction of its subjects in all matters of duty; and 
in Chinese society the idea of instruction as the one thing 
needful has so wrought itself into the forms of speech 
as to become a wearisome cant. The red card that in- 
vites you to an entertainment solicits " instruction." 
When a friend meets you he apologizes for having so 
long absented himself from your " instructions ; " and in 
familiar conversation, simple statements and opinions 
are often received as '' precious instruction " by those 
who do not by any means accept them. It is more to the 
point to add that one of the classical books denounces 
it as the greatest of parental faults to bring up a child 
without instruction. This relates to the moral rather 
than to the intellectual side of education. The Chinese 
government does, nevertheless, encourage purely intel- 
lectual culture; and it does so in a most decided and 
effectual manner — viz., by testing attainments and re- 
warding exertion. In the magnificence of the scale on 
which it does this, it is unapproached by any other 
nation of the earth. 

Lord Mahon, in his History of England, speaking of 
the patronage extended to learning in the period preced- 
ing Walpole, observes that '' though the sovereign was 
never an Augustus, the minister was always a Maecenas. 
Newton became Master of the Mint; Locke was Com- 
missioner of Appeals ; Steele was Commissioner of 
Stamps; Stepney, Prior, and Gray were employed in lu- 
crative and important embassies; Addison was Secretary 
of State; Tickell, Secretary in Ireland. Several rich 
sinecures were bestowed on Congreve and Rowe, on 
Hughes and Ambrose Philips." And he goes on to show 
how the illiberality of succeeding reigns was atoned for 
by popular favor, the diffusion of knowledge enabling the 
people to become the patron of genius and learning. 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 303 

The Chinese practise none of these three methods. 
The Emperor, less arbitrary than monarchs of the West, 
does not feel at liberty to reward an author by official 
appointments, and his minister has no power to do so. 
The inefficiency of popular patronage is less to their 
credit; authors reap much honor and little emolument 
from their works. It is something to be able to add that 
all three are merged in a regulated State patronage, ac- 
cording to which the reward of Hterary merit is a law of 
the Empire and a right of the people. This brings us to 
speak of the examination system.* 

Though not unknown to the Occidental public, these 
examinations are not properly understood, for the opinion 
has been gaining ground that their value has been over- 
rated, and that they are to be held responsible for all the 
shortcomings of Chinese intellectual culture. The truth 
is just the reverse. These shortcomings (I have not at- 
tempted to disguise them) are referable to other causes, 
while for nearly a thousand years this system of literary 
competition has operated as a stimulating and conserva- 
tive agency, to which are due not only the merits of the 
national education, such as it is, but its very existence. 

Coming down from the past, with the accretions of 
many centuries, it has expanded into a vast branch of the 
administration, and its machinery has become as com- 
plex as its proportions are enormous. Its ramifications 
extend to every district of the Empire ; and it commands 
the services of district magistrates, prefects, and other 
civil functionaries up to governors and viceroys. These 
are all auxiliary to the regular officers of the literary 
corporation. 

In each district there are two resident examiners with 

* The subject is here touched on incidentally. For a fuller 
treatment of it see the next two chapters. 



304 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the title of professor, whose duty it is to keep a register 
of all competing students, and to exercise them from 
time to time in order to stimulate their efforts and keep 
them in preparation for the higher examinations in which 
degrees are conferred. In each province there is one 
chancellor or superintendent of instruction, who holds 
office for three years, and is required to visit every district 
and hold the customary examinations within that time, 
conferring the first degree on a certain percentage of the 
candidates. There are, moreover, two special examiners 
for each province, generally members of the Hanlin, 
deputed from the capital to conduct the great triennial 
examinations and confer the second degree. 

The regular degrees are three : 

First, Hsiu-ts'ai, or ** Flower of talent." 

Second, Chii-jen, or " Promoted scholar." 

Third, Chin-shih, or *' Fit for office." 

To which may be added as a fourth degree the Han-lin, 
or member of the " Forest of Pencils." The first of these 
is sometimes compared to the degree of B.A., conferred by 
colleges and universities ; the second to M.A. ; the third to 
D.C.L. or LL.D. The last is accurately described by 
membership in the Imperial Academy; always bearing 
in mind how much a Chinese Academy must differ from 
a similar institution in the West. But so faint is the 
analogy which the other degrees bear to the literary de- 
grees of Western lands that the interchange of terms is 
sure to lead to misconceptions. Chinese degrees rep- 
resent talent, not knowledge; they are conferred by the 
State, without the intervention of school or college ; they 
carry with them the privileges of official rank; and they 
are bestowed on no more than a very small percentage 
of those who engage in competition. With us, on the con- 
trary, they give no official standing; they attest, where 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 305 

they mean anything, acquirements rather than abihty; 
and the number of those who are '' plucked " is usually 
small in comparison with those who are allowed to 
" pass." But, after all, the new-fledged bachelor of an 
Occidental college, his head crammed with the outlines 
of universal knowledge, answers quite as nearly to the 
sprightly hsiu-ts'ai, 

" Whose soul proud science never taught to stray 
Far as the solar walk or Milky Way," 

as does a Western general to the chief of an undisciplined 
horde of so-called soldiers. 

The following report of Pan Sze Lien, Chancellor of 
the Province of Shantung, though somewhat vague, will 
give us an idea of the official duties of the chief examiner 
and the spirit in which he professes to discharge them : 

" Your Majesty's servant," says the chancellor, " has 
guarded the seal of office with the utmost vigilance. In 
every instance where frauds were detected, he has handed 
the offender over to the proper authorities for punish- 
ment. In re-examining the successful, whenever their 
handwriting disagreed with that of their previous per- 
formances, he has at once expelled them from the hall, 
without granting a particle of indulgence. He every- 
where exhorted the students to aim at the cultivation of a 
high moral character. In judging of the merit of com- 
positions, he followed reason and the established rules. 
At the close of each examination he addressed the stu- 
dents face to face, exhorting them not to walk in ways of 
vanity, nor to concern themselves with things foreign 
to their vocation, but to uphold the credit of scholarship 
and to seek to maintain or retrieve the literary reputation 
of their several districts. Besides these occupations, 



3o6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

your servant, in passing from place to place, observed 
that the snow has everywhere exercised a reviving influ- 
ence; the young wheat is beginning to shoot up; the 
people are perfectly quiet and well disposed ; the price of 
provisions is moderate ; and those who suffered from the 
recent floods are gradually returning to their forsaken 
homes. For literary culture, Hsin Chou stands pre-emi- 
nent, while Tsao Chou is equally so in military matters." 

This is the whole report, with the exception of certain 
stereotyped phrases, employed to open and conclude such 
documents, and a barren catalogue of places and dates. 
It contains no statistical facts, no statement of the number 
of candidates, nor the proportion passed; indeed, no in- 
formation of any kind, except that conveyed in a chance 
allusion in the closing sentence. 

From this we learn that the chancellor is held respon- 
sible for examinations in the military art ; and it might be 
inferred that he reviews the troops and gauges the attain- 
ments of the cadets in military history, engineering, 
tactics, etc. ; but nothing of the kind : he sees them draw 
the bow, hurl the discus, and go through various manoeu- 
vres with spear and shield, which have no longer a place 
in civilized warfare. 

The first degree only is conferred by the provincial 
Chancellor, and the happy recipients, fifteen or twenty in 
each department, or one per cent, of the candidates, are 
decorated with the insignia of rank and admitted to the 
ground-floor of the nine-storied pagoda. The trial for the 
second degree is held in the capital of each province, by 
special commissioners, once in three years. It consists 
of three sessions of three days each, making nine days 
of almost continuous exertion — a strain to the mental and 
physical powers to which the infirm and aged frequently 
succumb. 



SCHOOL AND FAMILY TRAINING 307 

In addition to composition in prose and verse, the can- 
didate is required to show his acquaintance with history 
(the history of China), philosophy, criticism, and various 
branches of archaeology. Again one per cent, are decor- 
ated; but it is not until the more fortunate among them 
succeed in passing the metropolitan triennial that the 
meed of civil office is certainly bestowed. They are not, 
however, assigned to their respective offices until they 
have gone through two special examinations within the 
palace and in the presence of the Emperor. On this 
occasion the highest on the list is honored with the title 
of chuang-yuan, or " laureate " — a distinction so great 
that our Western curriculum has nothing to compare 
with it. In the late reign it was not thought unbefitting 
for the daughter of a chuang-yuan to be consort of the 
Son of Heaven. 

A score of the best admitted to membership in the 
Academy, two or three score are attached to it as pupils 
or probationers, and the rest drafted off to official posts 
in the capital or in the provinces, the humblest of which 
is supposed to compensate the occupant for a life of 
penury and toil. 

In conclusion, the civil-service competitive system ap- 
pears destined to play a conspicuous part in carrying for- 
ward an intellectual movement the incipient stages of 
which are already visible. It has cherished the national 
education, such as it is ; and if it has compelled the mind 
of China for ages past to grind in the mill of blind imita- 
tion, that is not the fault of the system, but its abuse. 

When the growing influence of Western science ani- 
mates it with a new spirit, as it must ere long, we shall see 
a million or more of patient students applying them- 
selves to scientific studies with all the ardor that now 
characterizes their literary competition. 



XVII 

CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 

THE reform proposed in the organization of our 
civil service, which contemplates the introduc- 
tion of a system of competitive examinations, 
makes an inquiry into the experience of other nations 
timely. England, France, and Prussia have each made 
use of competitive examinations in some branches 
of their public service. In all these States the result 
has been uniform — a conviction that such a system, 
so far as it can be employed, affords the best 
method of ascertaining the qualifications of candidates 
for government employment. But in these countries the 
experiment is of recent date and of limited application. 
We must look farther East if we would see the system 
working on a scale sufficiently large and through a period 
sufficiently extended to afford us a full exhibition of its 
advantages and defects. 

It is in China that its merits have been tested in the 
most satisfactory manner ; and if in this instance we 
should profit by their experience, it would not be the 
first lesson we have learned from the Chinese, nor the 
last they are capable of giving us. It is to them that we 
are indebted, among other obligations, for the mariner's 
compass, for gunpowder, and probably also for a remote 
suggestion of the art of printing. These arts have 
been of the first importance in their bearing on the ad- 
vancement of society — one of them having effected a 

308 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 309 

complete revolution in the character of modern warfare, 
while the others have imparted a mighty impulse to in- 
tellectual culture and commercial enterprise. Nor is it 
too much to affirm that, if we should adopt the Chinese 
method of testing the ability of candidates, and of select- 
ing the best men for the service of the State, the change 
it would effect in our civil administration would be not 
less beneficial than those that have been brought about 
by the discoveries in the arts to which I have referred. 

The bare suggestion may perhaps provoke a smile ; but 
are not the long duration of the Chinese government, and 
the vast population to which it has served to secure a fair 
measure of prosperity, phenomena that challenge ad- 
miration? Why should it be considered derogatory to 
our civilization to copy an institution which is confessedly 
the masterpiece in that skilful mechanism — the balance- 
wheel that regulates the working of that wonderful 
machinery ? 

In the arts which we have borrowed from the Chinese 
we have not been servile imitators. In every case we 
have made improvements that astonish the original in- 
ventors. We employ movable type, apply steam and 
electricity to printing, use the needle as a guide over 
seas which no junk would have ventured to traverse, and 
construct artillery such as the inventors of gunpowder 
never dreamed of. Would it be otherwise with a trans- 
planted competitive system? Should we not be able to 
purge it of certain defects which adhere to it in China, and 
so render it productive of better results than it yields in 
its native climate? I think, therefore, that I shall serve 
a better purpose than the simple gratification of curiosity 
if I devote a brief space to the consideration of the most 
admirable institution of the Chinese Empire. 

Its primary object was to provide men of ability for 



310 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the service of the State, and, whatever else it may have 
failed to accomplish, it is impossible to deny that it has 
fulfilled its specific end in a remarkable degree. The 
mandarins of China are almost without exception the 
choicest specimens of the educated classes. Alike in the 
capital and in the provinces, it is the mandarins that 
take the lead in every kind of literary enterprise. It 
is to them the Emperor looks to instruct as well as to 
govern his people ; and it is to them that the publishers 
look for additions to the literature of the nation — nine- 
tenths of the new books being written by mandarins. 
In their social meetings, their conversation abounds in 
classical allusions ; and instead of after-dinner speeches, 
they are accustomed to amuse themselves with the com- 
position of impromptu verses, which they throw off 
with incredible facility. It is their duty to encourage the 
efforts of students, to preside at the public examinations, 
and to visit the public schools — to promote, in short, by 
example as well as precept, the interests of education. 
Scarcely anything is deemed a deeper disgrace than for a 
magistrate to be found incompetent for this department 
of his official duties. So identified, indeed, are the 
mandarins with all that constitutes the intellectual life of 
the Chinese people that foreigners have come to regard 
them as a favored caste, like the Brahmins of India, or as 
a distinct order enjoying a monopoly of learning, Hke the 
priesthood in Egypt. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those stately 
officials, for whom the people make way with such awe- 
struck deference, as they pass along the street with em- 
broidered robes and imposing retinue, are not possessors 
of hereditary rank, neither do they owe their elevation 
to the favor of their sovereign, nor yet to the suffrages 
of their fellow-subjects. They are self-elected, and thQ 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 311 

people regard them with the deeper respect, because they 
know that they have earned their position by intellectual 
effort. What can be more truly democratic than (in the 
words of Anson Burlingame) to offer to all " the inspir- 
ation of fair opportunity ? " In this genuine democracy 
China stands unapproached among the nations of the 
earth; for, whatever imperfections may attach to her 
social organization or to her political system, it must 
be acknowledged that she has devised the most effectual 
method for encouraging effort and rewarding merit. 
Here at least is one country where wealth is not allowed 
to raise its possessor to the seat of power ; where the will 
even of an emperor cannot bestow its offices on unedu- 
cated favorites ; and where the caprice of the multitude 
is not permitted to confer the honors of the State on 
incompetent demagogues. 

The institution that accomplishes these results is not 
an innovation on the traditional policy of the Empire. It 
runs back in its essential features to the earliest period of 
recorded history. The adherence of the Chinese to it 
through so many ages well illustrates the conservative 
element in the national character; while the important 
changes it has undergone prove that this people is not 
by any means so fettered by tradition as to be incapable of 
welcoming improvements. 

The germ from which it sprang was a maxim of the 
ancient sages, expressed in four syllables — Chii hsien jen 
neng — " Employ the able and promote the worthy ; " and 
examinations were resorted to as affording the best 
test of ability and worth. Of the Great Shun, that model 
emperor of remote antiquity, who Hved about B.C. 2200, 
it is recorded that he examined his officers every third 
year, and after these examinations either gave them pro- 
motion or dismissed them from the service. On what 



312 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

subjects he examined them at a time when letters were 
but newly invented, and when books had as yet no exist- 
ence, we are not told; neither are we informed whether 
he subjected candidates to any test previous to appoint- 
ment ; yet the mere fact of such a periodical examination 
estabHshed a precedent which has continued to be ob- 
served to the present day. Every third year the govern- 
ment holds a great examination for the trial of candi- 
dates, and every fifth year makes a formal inquisition 
into the record of its civil functionaries. The latter is a 
poor substitute for the ordeal of public criticism to which 
officials are exposed in a country enjoying a free press; 
but the former, as we shall have occasion to show, is 
thorough of its kind, and severely impartial. 

More than a thousand years after the above date, at 
the commencement of the Chou dynasty, b. c. 1115, the 
government was accustomed to examine candidates as 
well as officers ; and this time we are not left in doubt as 
to the nature of the examination. The Chinese had be- 
come a cultivated people, and we are informed that all 
candidates for office were required to give proof of 
their acquaintance with the five arts — music, archery, 
horsemanship, writing, and arithmetic; and to be thor- 
oughly versed in the rites and ceremonies of public and 
social life — an accomplishment that ranked as a sixth 
art. These " six arts," expressed in the concise formula 
li, yi'ieh, she, yil, shu, su, comprehended the sum total of 
a liberal education at the period, and remind us of the 
triviuni and quadrivium of the mediaeval schools. 

Under the dynasty of Han, after the lapse of another 
thousand years, we find the range of subjects for the civil- 
service examinations largely extended. The Confucian 
Ethics had become current, and a moral standard was re- 
garded in the selection of the competitors — District mag- 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 313 

istrates were required to send up to the capital such 
men as had acquired a reputation for hsiao and lien — 
" filial piety " and " integrity " — the Chinese rightly con- 
sidering that the faithful performance of domestic and 
social duties is the best guarantee for fidelity in public 
life. These hsiao-lien, " filial sons and honest subjects," 
whose moral character had been sufficiently attested, 
were now subjected to trial in respect to their intellectual 
qualifications. The trial was twofold — first, as to their 
skill in the " six arts " already mentioned ; secondly, as 
to their familiarity with one or more of the following 
subjects: the civil law, military affairs, agriculture, the 
administration of the revenue, and the geography of the 
Empire with special reference to the state of the water 
communications. This was an immense advance on the 
meagre requirements of the more ancient dynasties. 

Passing over another thousand years, we come to the 
era of the T'angs and the Sungs, when we find the stand- 
ard of literary attainment greatly elevated, the graduates 
arranged in three classes, and officials in nine — a classi- 
fication which is still retained. 

Arriving at the close of the fourth millennium, under 
the sway of the Mings and of the Ch'ings of the present 
day, we find the simple trials instituted by Shun ex- 
panded into a colossal system, which may well claim to 
be the growth of four thousand years. It still exhibits 
the features that were prominent in its earHer stages — 
the " six arts," the '* five studies," and the " three de- 
grees " remaining as records of its progressive developn 
ment. But the " six arts " are not what they once were ; 
and the admirers of antiquity complain that examinations 
are sadly superficial as compared with those of the olden 
time, when competitors were required to ride a race, to 
shoot at a target, and to sing songs of their own com- 



314 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

position to the accompaniment of their own guitars. 
In these degenerate days examiners are satisfied with 
odes in praise of music, and essays on the archery and 
horsemanship of the ancients. 

Scholarship is a very different thing now from what 
it was in those ruder ages, when books were few, and 
the harp, the bow, and the saddle divided the student's 
time with the oral instructions of some famous master. 
Each century has added to the weight of his burden ; 
and to the " heir of all the ages " each passing generation 
has bequeathed a legacy of toil. Doomed to live among 
the deposits of a buried world, and contending with mil- 
lions of competitors, he can hardly hope for success 
without devoting himself to a life of unremitting study. 
True, he is not called upon to extend his researches be- 
yond the limits of his own national literature ; but that is 
all but infinite. It costs him at the outset years of labor 
to get possession of the key that unlocks it; for the 
learned language is totally distinct from his vernacular 
dialect, and justly regarded as the most difficult of the 
languages of man. Then he must commit to memory 
the whole circle of the recognized classics, and make 
himself familiar with the best writers of every age of a 
country which is no less prolific in books than in men. 
No doubt his course of study is too purely literary and too 
exclusively Chinese, but it is not superficial. In a popu- 
lar '' Student's Guide " we lately met with a course 
of reading drawn up for thirty years! We proposed 
putting it into the hands of a young American residing 
in China, who had asked advice as to what he should 
read. " Send it," he replied, *' but don't tell my mother." 

But it is time to take a closer view of these exami- 
nations as they are actually conducted. The candidates 




THE WATCH TOWER IX EXAMINATION GROUNDS 




FURNACE FOR BURNING PAPER IN EXAMINATION GROUNDS 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 315 

for office — those who are acknowledged as such in con- 
sequence of sustaining the initial trial — are divided into 
the three grades of hsiu-ts'ai, chu-jen, and chin-shih — 
** flowers of talent," " promoted scholars," and those who 
are '* ready for office." The trials for the first are held 
in the chief city of each district or hsien, a territorial 
division which corresponds to our county or to an Eng- 
lish shire. They are conducted by a chancellor, whose 
jurisdiction extends over an entire province containing, it 
may be, sixty or seventy such districts, each of which he is 
required to visit once a year, and each of which is pro- 
vided with a resident sub-chancellor, whose duty it is to 
examine the scholars in the interval, and to have them 
in readiness on the chancellor's arrival. 

About two thousand competitors enter the lists, ranging 
in age from the precocious youth just entering his teens 
up to the venerable grandsire of seventy winters. Shut 
up for a night and a day, each in his narrow cell, they 
produce each a poem and one or two essays on themes 
assigned by the chancellor, and then return to their 
homes to await the bulletin announcing their place in 
the scale of merit. The chancellor, assisted by his clerks, 
occupies several days in sifting the heap of manuscripts, 
from which he picks out some twenty or more that are 
distinguished by beauty of penmanship and grace of 
diction. The authors of these are honored with the 
degree of " Flower of Talent," and are entitled to wear 
the decorations of the lowest grade in the corporation of 
mandarins. 

The successful student wins no purse of gold and ob- 
tains no office, but he has gained a prize which he deems 
a sufficient compensation for years of patient toil. He is 
the best of a hundred scholars, exempted from liability 



3i6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

to corporal punishment, and raised above the vulgar 
herd. The social consideration to which he is now enti- 
tled makes it a grand day for him and his family. 

Once in three years these " Flowers of Talent," these 
picked men of the districts, repair to the provincial 
capital to engage in competition for the second degree — 
that of Chii Jen, or " Promoted Scholar." The number 
of competitors amounts to ten thousand, more or less, 
and of these only one in every hundred can be admitted 
to the coveted degree. The trial is conducted by special 
examiners sent down from Peking; and this examination 
takes a wider range than the preceding. No fewer than 
three sessions of nearly three days each are occupied, 
instead of the single day for the first degree. Com- 
positions in prose and verse are required, and themes are 
assigned with a special view to testing the extent of 
reading and depth of scholarship of the candidates. Pen- 
manship is left out of the account — each production, 
marked with a cipher, being copied by an official scribe, 
that the examiners may have no clew to its author and no 
temptation to render a biassed judgment. 

The victor still receives neither office nor emolument; 
but the honor he achieves is scarcely less than that which 
was won by the victors in the Olympic games. Again, 
he is one of a hundred, each of whom was a picked man ; 
and as a result of this second victory he goes forth an 
acknowledged superior among ten thousand contending 
scholars. He adorns his cap with the gilded button of 
a higher grade, erects a pair of lofty flag-staves before 
the gate of his family residence, and places a tablet over 
his door to inform those who pass by that this is the abode 
of a literary prize-man. But our " Promoted Scholar " 
is not yet a mandarin in the proper sense of the term. 
The distinction already attained only stimulates his dc 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 317 

sire for higher honors — honors which bring at last the 
solid recompense of an income — travelling at the expense 
of the state. 

In the spring of the following year he proceeds to 
Peking to seek the next higher degree, attainment of 
which will prove a passport to office. The contest is still 
with his peers ; that is, with other '' Promoted Scholars," 
who, like himself, hav^e come up from all the provinces 
of the empire. But the chances are this time more in 
his favor, as the number of prizes is now tripled ; and if 
the gods are propitious his fortune is made. 

Though ordinarily not very devout, he now shows him- 
self peculiarly solicitous to secure the favor of the divini- 
ties. He burns incense and gives alms. If he sees a 
fish floundering on the hook, he pays its price and restores 
it to its native element. He picks struggling ants out of 
the rivulet made by a recent shower, distributes moral 
tracts, or, better still, rescues chance bits of printed 
paper from being trodden in the mire of the streets.* If 
his name appears among the favored few, he not only 
wins himself a place in the front ranks of the lettered, 
but he plants his foot securely on the rounds of the 
official ladder by which, without the prestige of birth or 
the support of friends, it is possible to rise to a seat in 
the Grand Council of State or a place in the Imperial 
Cabinet. All this advancement presents itself in the dis- 
tant prospect, while the office upon which he immediately 
enters is one of respectability, and it may be of profit. 
It is generally that of mayor or sub-mayor of a district 
city, or sub-chancellor in the district examinations — the 
vacant posts being distributed by lot, and therefore impar- 

* The bearing of good works of this kind on the result of the 
competition is copiously illustrated by collections of anecdotes 
which are widely circulated. 



31 8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tially, among those who have proved themselves to be 
" ready for office." 

Before the drawing of lots, however, for the post of a 
magistrate among the people, our ambitious student has 
a chance of winning the more distinguished honor of a 
place in the Imperial Academy. With this view, the two 
or three hundred survivors of so many contests appear 
in the palace, where themes are assigned them by the 
Emperor himself, and the highest honor is paid to the 
pursuit of letters by the exercises being presided over 
by his Majesty in person. Penmanship reappears as an 
element in determining the result, and a score or more 
of those whose style is the most finished, whose scholar- 
ship the ripest, and whose handwriting the most elegant, 
are drafted into the college of Hanlin, the *' forest of 
pencils," a kind of Imperial Institute the members of 
which are recognized as standing at the head of the 
literary profession. These are constituted poets and 
historians to the Celestial Court, or deputed to act as 
chancellors and examiners in the several provinces.* 

But the diminishing series in this ascending scale has 
not yet reached its final term. The long succession of 
contests culminates in the designation by the Emperor 
of some individual whom he regards as the Chuang Yuan, 
or Model Scholar of the Empire — the bright consum- 
mate flower of the season. This is not a common annual 
like the senior wranglership of Cambridge, nor the pro- 
duct of a private garden like the valedictory orator of our 
American colleges. It blooms but once in three years, 
and the whole Empire yields but a single blossom — a 
blossom that is culled by the hand of Majesty and 
esteemed among the brightest ornaments of his dominion. 

* For details concerning the Hanlin Yuan, see the next 
chapter. 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATION 319 

Talk of academic honors such as are bestowed by West- 
ern nations in comparison with those which this Oriental 
Empire heaps on her scholar laureate! Provinces con- 
tend for the shining prize, and the town that gives the 
victor birth becomes noted forever. Swift heralds bear 
the tidings of his triumph, and the hearts of the people 
leap at their approach. We have seen them enter a 
humble cottage, and amidst the flaunting of banners and 
the blare of trumpets announce to its startled inmates 
that one of their relations had been crowned by the Em- 
peror as the laureate of the year. So high was the esti- 
mation in which the people held the success of their 
fellow-townsman that his wife was requested to visit 
the six gates of the city, and to scatter before each a 
handful of rice, that the whole population might share 
in the good-fortune of her household. A popular tale, 
represents a goddess as descending from heaven, that she 
might give birth to the scholar laureate of the Empire. 
So exalted is this dignity that in 1872 the daughter of a 
Chiiang Yuan was deemed sufficiently noble to be chosen 
for Empress Consort. 

All this has, we confess, an air of Oriental display and 
exaggeration. It suggests rather the dust and sweat of 
the great national games of antiquity than the mental 
toil and intellectual triumphs of the modern world. But 
it is obvious that a competition which excites so pro- 
foundly the interest of a whole nation must be productive 
of very decided results. That it leads to the selection of 
the best talent for the service of the public we have 
already seen; but beyond this — its primary object — it 
exercises a profound influence upon the education of the 
people and the stability of the government. It is all, in 
fact, that China has to show in the way of an educational 
system. She has few colleges and no universities in our 



320 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Western sense,* and no national system of common- 
schools; yet it may be confidently asserted that China 
gives to learning a more effective patronage than she 
could have done if each of her emperors had been an 
Augustus and every premier a Maecenas. She says to all 
her sons, *' Prosecute your studies by such means as you 
may be able to command, whether in public or in private ; 
and, when you are prepared, present yourselves in the 
examination-hall. The government will judge of your 
proficiency and reward your attainments." 

Nothing can exceed the ardor which this standing 
offer infuses into the minds of all who have the re- 
motest prospect of sharing in the prizes. They study 
not merely while they have teachers to incite them to 
diligence, but continue their studies with unabated zeal 
long after they have left the schools; they study in soli- 
tude and poverty; they study amidst the cares of a 
family and the turmoil of business ; and the shining 
goal is kept steadily in view until the eye grows dim 
with age. Some of the aspirants impose on themselves 
the task of writing a fresh essay every day ; and they do 
not hesitate to enter the lists as often as the public ex- 
aminations recur, resolved, if they fail, to continue trying, 
believing that perseverance has power to command suc- 
cess, and encouraged by the legend of the man who, 
needing a sewing needle, made one by grinding a crow- 
bar on a piece of granite. 

We have met an old mandarin who related with evi- 
dent pride how, on gaining the second degree, he had re- 
moved with his whole family to Peking, from the dis- 
tant province of Yunnan, to compete for the third; and 

♦This was written prior to the opening of the New Univer- 
sity at Peking; and the North University at Tientsin — both 
closed suddenly, but not hopelessly, by the Boxer uprising. 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 321 

how at each triennial contest he had failed, until, after 
more than twenty years of patient waiting, at the seventh 
trial, and at the mature asfe of threescore he bore off 
the coveted prize. He had worn his honors for seven 
years, and was then mayor of the city of Tientsin. In a 
list now on our table of ninety-nine successful com- 
petitors for the second degree, sixteen are over forty 
years of age, one sixty-two, and one eighty-three. The 
average age of the whole number is above thirty ; and for 
the third degree the average is of course proportionally 
higher. 

So powerful are the motives addressed to them that 
the whole body of scholars who once enter the examina- 
tion-hall are devoted to study as a life-long occupation. 
We thus have a class of men, numbering in the aggregate 
some two or three millions, who keep their faculties 
bright by constant exercise, and whom it would be diffi- 
cult to parallel in any Western country for readiness 
with the pen and retentiveness of memory. If these men 
are not highly educated, it is the fault not of the com- 
petitive system, which proves its power to stimulate them 
to such prodigious exertions, but of the false standard of 
intellectual merit established in China. In that country 
letters are everything and science nothing. Men occupy 
themselves with words rather than with things; and the 
powers of acquisition are more cultivated than those of 
invention. 

The type of Chinese education is not that of our 
modern schools ; but when compared with the old cur- 
riculum of languages and philosophy it appears by no 
means contemptible. A single paper, intended for the last 
day of the examination for the second degree, may serve 
as a specimen. It covers five subjects — criticism, history, 
agriculture, military affairs, and finance. There are 



322 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

about twenty questions on each subject, and while they 
certainly do not deal with it in a scientific manner, it is 
something in their favor to say that they are such as 
cannot be answered without an extensive course of read- 
ing in Chinese literature. One question under each of 
the five heads is all that our space will allow us to 
introduce. 

1. " How do the rival schools of Wang and Ching 
differ in respect to the exposition of the meaning and 
the criticism of the text of the * Book of Changes ' ? " 

2. " The great historian Sze Ma Ch'ien prides himself 
on having gathered up much material that was neglected 
by other writers. What are the sources from which he 
derived his information? " 

3. '* From the earliest times great attention has been 
given to the improvement of agriculture. Will you in- 
dicate the arrangements adopted for that purpose by the 
several dynasties ? " 

4. *' The art of war arose under Huang Ti, forty- 
four hundred years ago. Different dynasties have since 
that time adopted different regulations in regard to the 
use of militia or standing armies, the mode of rais- 
ing supplies for the army, etc. Can you state these 
briefly?" 

5. " Give an account of the circulating medium under 
different dynasties, and state how the currency of the 
Sung dynasty corresponded with our use of paper money 
at the present day." 

In another paper, issued on a similar occasion, as- 
tronomy takes the place of agriculture ; but the questions 
are confined to such allusions to the subject as are to 
be met with in the circle of their classical literature, and 
afford but little scope for the display of scientific attain- 
ments. Still, the fact that a place is found for this 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 323 

class of subjects is full of hope. It indicates that the 
door, if not fully open, is at least sufficiently ajar to 
admit the introduction of our Western sciences with 
all their progeny of arts, a band powerful enough to 
lift the Chinese out of the mists of their mediaeval 
scholasticism, and to bring them into the full light of 
modern knowledge. If the examiners were scientific 
men, and if scientific subjects were made sufficiently 
prominent in these higher examinations, millions of 
aspiring students would soon become as earnest in the 
pursuit of modern science as they now are in the study 
of their ancient classics.* Thus reformed and renovated 
by the injection of fresh blood into the old arteries, 
this noble institution would be worthy of its dignity as 
a great national university — a university, not like those of 
Oxford and Cambridge, which train their own gradu- 
ates, but — to compare great things with small — like the 
University of London, promoting the cause of learning 
by examining candidates and conferring degrees. The 
University of London admits to its initial examination 
annually about fourteen hundred candidates, and passes 
one half. The government examinations of China admit 

* As a sample of the practical bearing which it is possible to 
give to these examination exercises, we take a few questions 
from another paper: 

" Fire-arms began with the use of rockets in the Chou dynasty 
(B.C. 1122-256); in what book do we first meet with the word 
for cannon? What is the difference in the two classes of en- 
gines to which it is appHed (applied also to the catapult) ? Is 
the defence of K'ai Feng Fu its first recorded use? Kublai 
Khan, it is said, obtained cannon of a new kind ; from whom 
did he obtain them? The Sungs had several varieties of small 
cannon, what were their advantages? When the Mings, in the 
reign of Yung Lo, invaded Cochin-China, they obtained a kind 
of cannon called the ' weapons of the gods ; ' can you give an 
account of their origin?" 



324 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

about two million candidates every year, and pass only 
two or three per cent. 

The political bearings of this competitive system are 
too important to be passed over, and yet too numerous 
to be treated in detail. Its incidental advantages may be 
comprehended under three heads. 

1. It serves the State as a safety-valve, providing a 
career for those ambitious spirits who might otherwise 
foment disturbances or excite revolutions. While in 
democratic countries the ambitious flatter the people, and 
in monarchies fawn on the great, in China, instead of 
resorting to dishonorable arts or to political agitation, 
they betake themselves to quiet study. They know that 
their mental calibre will be fairly gauged, and that if they 
are born to rule, the competitive examinations will open 
to them a career. The competitive system has not, indeed, 
proved sufficient to employ all the forces that tend to 
produce intestine commotion; but it is easy to perceive 
that without it the shocks must have been more frequent 
and serious. 

2. It operates as a counterpoise to the power of an 
absolute monarch. Without it the great offices would be 
filled by hereditary nobles, and the minor offices be 
farmed out by thousands to imperial favorites* With it 
a man of talent may raise himself from the humblest ranks 
to the dignity of viceroy or premier. Chiang hsiang pen 
wu chung — *' The general and the prime-minister are not 
born in office " — is a line that every schoolboy is taught 
to repeat. Rising from the people, the mandarins under- 
stand the feelings and wants of the people, though it 
must be confessed that they are usually avaricious and 
oppressive in proportion to the length of time it has 

* The Manchus in order to maintain their power have re- 
served to themselves an undue proportion of official posts. 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 325 

taken them to reach their elevation. Still, they have 
the support and sympathy of the people to a greater 
extent than they could have if they were creatures of 
arbitrary power. The system, therefore, introduces a 
popular element into the government that acts as a 
check on the prerogative of the Emperor as to the ap- 
pointment of officers, and serves as a kind of constitution 
to his subjects, prescribing the conditions on which they 
shall obtain a share in the administration of the power of 
the State. 

3. It gives the government a hold on the educated 
gentry, and binds them to the support of existing insti- 
tutions. It renders the educated classes eminently con- 
servative, because they know that in the event of a 
revolution civil office would be bestowed, not as the 
reward of learning, but for political or military services. 
The literati, the most influential portion of the popula- 
tion, are for this reason also the most loyal. It is their 
support that has upheld the reigning house, though of a 
foreign race, through these long years of civil commo- 
tion, while to the " rebels " it has been a ground of re- 
proach and a source of weakness that they have had but 
few literary men in their ranks. 

In districts where the people have distinguished them- 
selves by zeal in the Imperial cause, the only recom- 
pense they crave is a slight addition to the numbers on 
the competitive prize-list. Such additions the govern- 
ment has made very frequently of late years, in consider- 
ation of money supplies. It has also, to relieve its ex- 
hausted exchequer, put up for sale the decorations of the 
literary orders, and issued patents admitting contributors 
to the higher examinations without passing through the 
lower grades. But though the government thus debases 
the coin, it guards itself jealously against the issue of a 



326 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

spurious currency. Some years ago Pei Ching, first 
president of the Examining Board at Peking, was put to 
death for having fraudulently conferred two or three de- 
grees. The fraud was limited in extent, but the damage 
it threatened was incalculable. It tended to shake the 
confidence of the people in the administration of that 
branch of the government which constituted their only 
avenue to honors and office. Even the Emperor cannot 
tamper with it without peril. He may lower its demands, 
in accordance with the wishes of a majority, but he 
could not set it aside without producing a revolution, for 
it is the ballot box of the people, the grand charter of their 
rights. 

Such is the Chinese competitive system, and such are 
some of its advantages and defects. May it not be 
feasible to graft something of a similar character on 
our own republican institutions? More congenial to the 
spirit of our free government, it might be expected to 
yield better fruits in this country than in China. In 
British India it works admirably. In Great Britain, too, 
the diplomatic and consular services have been placed on 
a competitive basis; and something of the kind must 
be done for our own foreign service if we wish our influ- 
ence abroad to be at all commensurate with our great- 
ness and prosperity at home. When will our government 
learn that a good consul is worth more than a man-of- 
war, and that an able minister is of more value than a 
whole fleet of iron-clads? To secure good consuls and 
able ministers we must choose them from a body of men 
who have been picked and trained. 

In effecting these reforms, the bill of Mr. Jenckes, 
of Rhode Island,* might serve as an entering wedge. 

* This was read before the American Oriental Society in 1868, 
and published in the North American Review in July, 1870. 




ROW OF CELLS IN EXAMINATION GROUNDS 



CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 327 

It would secure the acknowledgment of the principle — 
certainly not alarmino^ly revolutionary — that places should 
go by merit. But it does not go far enough. '' It does 
not," he says, '' touch places which are to be filled with 
the advice and consent of the Senate. It would not in the 
least interfere with the scramble for office which is 
going on at the other end of the Avenue, or which fills 
with anxious crowds the corridors of the other wing of 
the Capitol. This measure, it should be remembered, 
deals only with the inferior officers, whose appointment is 
made by the President alone, or by the heads of 
departments." 

But what danger is there of infringing on the rights of 
the Senate? Is there anything that would aid the Senate 
so much in giving their *' advice and consent " as the 
knowledge that the applicants for confirmation had 
proved their competence before a Board of Examiners? 
And would not the knowledge of the same fact lighten 
the burdens of the President, and relieve him of much of 
the difficulty which he now experiences in the selection of 
qualified men. Such an arrangement would not take 
away the power of executive appointment, but regulate its 
exercise. Nor would it, if applied to elective offices, in- 
terfere with the people's freedom of choice further than 
to insure that the candidates should be men of suitable 
qualifications. It may not be easy to prescribe rules for 
that popular sovereignty which follows only its own 
sweet will, but it is humiliating to reflect that our " man- 
Since that date the Civil Service Reform has taken so strong a 
hold on the public mind that no political party dares to disavow 
it. It is applied as yet on a very limited scale, but its scope has 
been greatly extended during the present year (1896), and there 
is reason to anticipate that competitive examinations may 
eventually become as important a factor in our political system 
as they have been in that of China. 



328 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

darins " are far from being the most intellectual class 
of the community.* 

* The following example of our American methods is literally- 
true — excepting the names of the competitors : 

Two men met at Terre Haute, in Indiana (my native State) 
to discuss the questions of the day before a large assembly, and 
to ask their fellow citizens for a seat in the State Legislature. 
Tompkins, who spoke first, was well known to my parents, as 
a young man of boundless ambition and no education — not even 
that of a common school. Jacobs, a graduate of Yale College, 
did not fail in his reply to expose the ignorance of his rival. 
The latter, in his closing speech, confessed that he had never 
" rubbed his back against a college wall." " I am a self-made 
man, and I glory in it. Franklin was a self-made man, so are 
many of you, my fellow citizens. Are we for that reason to be 
sneered at by a college prig? Let him bring out his books and 
I will read with him page for page of Latin and Greek, and 
you shall be our judges." Jacobs declining the contest as out 
of place — coram non judice — the populace raised a " hurrah for 
the self-made man " and sent him to the Legislature. Now 
which is the more civilized mode of making " mandarins," this, 
or that of the Chinese? 



XVIII 

THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 

NEAR the foot of a bridge that spans the Imperial 
Canal a few rods to the north of the British 
Legation, the visitor to Peking may have noticed 
the entrance to a small yamen. Here are the headquarters 
of the Hanlin Academy, one of the pivots of the Empire, 
and the very centre of its literary activity. 

On entering the enclosure, nothing meets the eye of 
one who is unable to read the inscriptions that would 
awaken the faintest suspicion of the importance of the 
place. A succession of open courts with broken pave- 
ments, and covered with rubbish; five low, shed-like 
structures, one story in height, that have the appearance 
of an empty barn; these flanked by a double series of 
humbler buildings, quite inferior to the stables of a well- 
conducted farmstead — some of the latter in ruins ; and 
dust and decay everywhere — Such Is the aspect presented 
by the chief seat of an institution which is justly regarded 
as among the glories of the Empire. A glance, however, 
at the inscriptions on the walls — some of them In Imperial 
"autograph — warns the visitor that he is not treading on 
common ground. 

This impression is confirmed when, arriving at the 
last of the transverse buildings. It Is found to be locked, 
and all efforts to obtain an entrance fruitless. Its yellow 
tiling is suggestive; and the janitor, proof against per- 
suasion, announces, with a mysterious air, that this is a 

329 



330 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

pavilion sacred to the use of the Emperor. There, con- 
cealed from vulgar eyes, stands a throne, on which his 
Majesty sits in state whenever he deigns to honor the 
Academy with his presence. 

Sundry inscriptions in gilded characters record the 
dates and circumstances of these Imperial visits, which 
are by no means so frequent as to be commonplace occur- 
rences. A native guide-book to the '' Hons " of the 
capital, devoting eighteen pages to the Hanlin Yuan, 
dwells with special emphasis on the imposing ceremonial 
connected with a visit of Ch'ien Lung the Magnificent in 
the first year of the cycle which occurred after the com- 
mencement of his reign. 

From this authority we learn that the rooms of the 
Academy, having fallen into a state of decay, were re- 
built by order of the Emperor, and rededicated, with 
solemn rites, to the service of letters. His Majesty ap- 
peared in person to do honor to the occasion, and con- 
ferred on the two presidents the favor of an entertain- 
ment in the Imperial pavilion. Of the members of the 
Academy not fewer than one hundred and sixty-five were 
present. " Among the proudest recollections of the Hall 
of Gems" (the Hanlin), says the chronicler, "for a 
thousand years there was no day like that." 

The Emperor further signalized the occasion by two 
conspicuous gifts. 

The first was a present to the library * of a complete 
set of the wonderful encyclopaedia called the T'u Shu Chi 
Ch'eng. Printed in the reign of K'ang Hsi on movable 
copper types, and comprehending a choice selection of 
the most valuable works, it extends to six thousand 

* This library, and the buildings containing it were set on 
fire by Imperial soldiers in June 1900, in the hope of burning 
the British Legation. 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 331 

volumes, and constitutes of itself a library of no 
contemptible magnitude. 

The other gift, less bulky, but more precious, was an 
original ode from the Imperial pencil. Written as an im- 
promptu effusion in the presence of the assembled 
Academicians, it bears so many marks of premeditation 
that no one could have been imposed on by the artifice 
of Imperial vanity. It is engraved after the original au- 
tograph on a pair of marble slabs, from which we have 
taken a copy. 

In their native dress these verses are worthy of their 
august author, who was a poet of no mean ability; but 
in the process of translation they lose as much as a 
Chinese does in exchanging his flowing silks for the 
parsimonious costume of the West. At the risk of pro- 
ducing a travesty instead of a translation, we venture to 
offer a prose version. 



ODE 



COMPOSED BY THE EMPEROR CH lEN LUNG ON VISITING THE HANLIN 

YUAN IN 1744. 

On this auspicious morning the recipients of celestial favor, 
Rank after rank, unite in singing the hymn of rededication. 
Thus the birds renew their plumage, and the eagle, soaring 

heavenward, symbolizes the rise of great men. 
Those here who chant poems and expound the Book of Changes 

are all worthies of distinguished merit. 
Their light concentres on the embroidered throne, and my pen 

distils its flowery characters, 
While incense in spiral wreaths rises from the burning censer. 
Before me is the pure, bright, pearly Hall; 
Compared with this, who vaunts the genii on the islands of the 

blest? 
A hundred years of aesthetic culture culminate in the jubilee of 

this day. 



332 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

To maintain a state of prosperity, we must cherish fear, and 

rejoice with trembling. 
In your new poems, therefore, be slow to extol the vastness of 

the Empire ; 
Rather by faithful advice uphold the throne. 
I need not seek that ministers like Fu Yiieh shall be revealed 

to me in dreams ; 
For at this moment I am startled to find myself singing the 

song of Yao (in the midst of my future ministers). 
In my heart I rejoice that ye hundreds of officers all know my 

mind. 
And will not fan my pride with lofty flattery. 
Happy am I to enter this garden of letters, 
In the soft radiance of Indian summer; 
To consecrate the day to the honor of genius, 
And to gather around my table the gems of learning; 
But I blush at my unworthiness to entertain the successors of 

Fang and Tu. 
Why should Ma and Ch'iu be accounted solitary examples? 
Here we have a new edition of the ancient Shih Chii (library 

of the Hans). 
We behold anew the glorious light of a literary constellation. 
But the shadow on the flowery tiles has reached the number 

eight ; 
Drink till you are drunk; three times pass round the bowl. 
When morning sunlight fell on the pictured screen, 
We opened the Hanlin with a feast, 
The members assembling in official robes. 
We took a glance at the library — enough to load five carts and 

fill four storehouses. 
We visited in order the well of Liu and the pavilion of Ko. 
We watch the pencil trace the gemmy page, 
While the waters of Ying Chao (the Pierian Spring) rise to the 

brim ; and in flowery cups we dispense the fragrant tea. 
Anciently ministers were compared to boats which crossed rivers ; 
With you for my ministers I would dare to encounter the waves 

of the sea. 

From this effusion of Imperial genius we turn again 
to the august body in whose honor it was written, and in- 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 333 

quire, Where are the apartments in which those learned 
scribes labor on their elegant tasks ? Where is the hall in 
which they assemble for the transaction of business? 
Where the library supplied by Imperial munificence for 
the choicest scholars of the Empire? These questions 
are soon answered, but not in a way to meet the expec- 
tations of the visitor. The composing-rooms are those 
ranges of low narrow chambers on either hand of the 
entrance, some of them bearing labels which indicate 
that it is there the Imperial will puts on its stately robes ; 
but they are empty, and neither swept nor garnished. 

Those of the members who have special functions are 
employed within the precincts of the palace, while the 
large class known as probationers prosecute their studies 
in a separate college called the Shu Ch'ang Kuan. Com- 
mon hail, or assembly-room, there is none. The society 
holds no business meetings. Its organization is despotic ; 
the work of the members being mapped out by the di- 
rectory, which consists of the presidents and vice-presi- 
dents. In an out-of-the-way comer, you are shown a 
suite of small rooms, which serves as a vestry for these 
magnates, where they drink tea, change their robes, 
and post up their records. For this purpose they come 
together nine times a month, and remain in session about 
two hours. 

As for the other members, they convene only on feast- 
days as marked in the rubrics of the State, and then it 
is merely for the performance of religious rites or civil 
ceremonies. The ritual for both (or rather the calendar) 
is conspicuously posted on the pillars of the front court, 
suggesting that the sap and juice of the Academy have 
dried up, and that these husks of ceremony are the 
residuum. 

So far as this locality is concerned, this is true; for 



334 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

though the Academy exists, as we shall see, in undimin- 
ished vigor, the work intended to be done here is trans- 
ferred to other places; and but for occasions of cere- 
mony these halls would be as little trodden as those of 
the academies of Nineveh or Babylon. Of the cere- 
monies here performed, the most serious is the worship 
of Confucius, before whose shrine the company of dis- 
ciples arranged in files, near or remote, according to 
their rank, kneel three times in the open court, and nine 
times bow their heads to the earth. A more modern 
sage, Han Wen Kung, whose chief merit was an elo- 
quent denunciation of Buddhism, is revered as the cham- 
pion of orthodoxy, and honored with one-third this 
number of prostrations. 

Besides the temples to these lights of literature, there 
is another shrine in which incense is perpetually burning 
before the tablets of certain Taoist divinities, among them 
the god of the North Star. 

The juxtaposition of these altars illustrates the curious 
jumble of religious ideas which prevails even among the 
educated classes. If Confucianism, pure and simple, calm 
and philosophic, were to be found anywhere, where 
should we expect to meet with it if not in the halls of 
the Hanlin Yuan? 

As to the library, it must have been at least respectable 
in the palmy days of Ch'ien Lung — that Emperor having 
replenished it, as we have seen, by a gift of six thousand 
volumes. Copies of a still larger collection of works, 
the Sze K'u Ch'ilan Shu, printed in the earlier part of the 
same reign, were deposited there, as also a manuscript 
copy of the immense collection known as Yung Lo Ta 
Tien. But in China, libraries are poorly preserved; 
books have no proper binding, the leaves are loosely 
stitched, the paper flimsy and adapted to the taste of 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 335 

a variety of insects, while their official guardians often 
commit depredations under the influence of an appetite 
not altogether literary. 

Through these combined influences, the Hanlin library 
has dwindled almost to a vanishing-point. Two of the 
book-rooms being within the sacred enclosure of the 
Imperial pavilion, the writer was not permitted to see 
them. The greater part of the books have been trans- 
ferred elsewhere; and the condition of those that re- 
main may be inferred from that of the only book-room 
that was accessible. Its furniture consisted of half a 
dozen cases, some locked, some open — the latter empty; 
the floor was strewn with fragments of paper, and the 
absence of footprints in the thick deposit of dust suffi- 
ciently indicated that the pathway to this fountain of 
knowledge is no longer frequented. 

But things in China are not to be estimated by or- 
dinary rules. Here the decay of a building is no indi- 
cation of the decadence of the institution which it rep- 
resents. The public buildings of the Chinese are, for 
the most part, mean and contemptible in comparison with 
those of Western nations ; but it would not be less erro- 
neous for us to judge their civilization by the state of 
their architecture than for them, as they are prone to do, 
to measure ours by the tape-line of our tailor. With 
them architecture is not a fine art ; public edifices of every 
class are constructed on a uniform model; and even in 
private dwellings there is no such thing as novelty or 
variety of design. The original idea of both is incapable 
of much development; the wooden frame and limited 
height giving them an air of meanness; while the 
windowless wall, which caution or custom requires to 
be drawn around every considerable building, excludes 
it from the public view, and consequently diminishes, if 



336 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

it does not destroy, the desire for aesthetic effect. Ma- 
teriaHstic as the people are in their habits of thought, 
their government, based on ancient maxims, has sought 
to repress rather than encourage the tendency to luxury 
in this direction. The genius of China does not affect 
excellence in material arts. With more propriety than 
ancient Rome she might apply to herself the lines of 
the Roman poet: 

" Excudent alii spirantia moUius sera 
. . . regere imperio populos . . . 
Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem." 

For not only is the Chinese notoriously backward in 
all those accomplishments in which the Roman excelled, 
but, without being warlike, he has equalled the Roman 
in the extent of his conquests, and surpassed him in the 
permanence of his possessions. With him the art of 
government is the " great study ; " and all else — science, 
literature, religion — merely subsidiary. 

For six hundred years, with the exception of a brief 
interval, the Hanlin has had its home within the walls 
of Peking, witnessing from this position the rise of 
three Imperial dynasties and the overthrow of two. 
Under the Mongols it stood, not on its present site, but a 
little to the west of the present drum-tower. Kublai and 
his successors testified their sense of its importance by 
installing it in an old palace of the Ch'in Tartars. Ao 
Yang Ch'u, a discontented scholar of a later age, alluding 
to the contrast presented by the quarters it then occupied, 
laments in verse 

** The splendid abode of the old Hanlin, 
The glittering palace of the Prince of Ch'in." 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 337 

The Ming emperors removed it to its present position, 
appropriating for its use the site of an old granary. The 
Ch'ing emperors had a palace to bestow on the Mongolian 
lamas, but allowed the Hanlin to remain in its contracted 
quarters, erecting at the same time, in immediate con- 
tiguity, a palace for one of their princes. This is now 
occupied by the British Legation, whose lofty chimneys 
overlook the grounds of the Academy, and so menace the 
feng-shui (good luck) of the entire literary corporation. 
If this were the whole of its history, the Hanlin would 
still enjoy the distinction of being more than twice as 
ancient as any similar institution now extant in the 
Western world; but this last period — one of few vicissi- 
tudes — covers no more than half its career. Its annals 
run back to twice six hundred years, and during that 
long period it has shared the fortunes and followed the 
footsteps of the several dynasties which have contended 
for the mastery of the Empire. From its nature and 
constitution attached to the court, it has migrated with 
the court, now north, now south, until the capital became 
fixed in its present position. At the beginning of the 
fifteenth century, the Academy was for a few years at 
Nanking, where Hung Wu made his capital. During 
the period of the Crusades it accompanied the court of the 
Southern Sungs as they retired before the invading 
Tartars, and fixed at Hangchou the seat of their semi- 
empire. For two centuries previous it had shed its 
lustre on Pien Liang (Kai Feng) the capital of the 
Northern Sungs. 

During the five short dynasties (907-960) it disap- 
pears amidst the confusion of perpetual war, though even 
then each aspirant for " The Yellow " surrounded him- 
self with some semblance of the Hanlin, as a circum- 



338 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

stance essential to Imperial state; but its earliest, 
brightest and longest period of repose was the reign of 
the T angs, from 627 to 904, or from the rise of Mahomet 
till the death of Alfred. For China this is not an ancient 
date; but it was scarcely possible that such a body, 
with such objects, should come into existence at any 
earlier epoch. Under the more ancient dynasties the 
range of literature was limited, and the style of com- 
position rude. It is not till the long reign of the house of 
Han that the language obtains its full maturity; but 
even then taste was little cultivated — the writers of that 
day being, as the native critics say, more studious of 
matter than of manner. During the short-lived dynasties 
that followed the Han and Ch'in, the struggle for power 
allowed no breathing-time for the revival of letters ; but 
when the Empire, so long drenched in blood, was at 
length united under the sway of the T'angs, the begin- 
ning of the new era of peace and prosperity was marked 
by an outburst of literary splendor. 

For twenty years Kao Tsu, the founder, had been in- 
volved in sanguinary conflicts. In such circumstances 
valor was virtue, and military skill comprised all that 
was valued in learning. In the work of domestic con- 
quest, his most efficient aid was his second son, Shih Min. 
Destined to complete what his father had begun, but 
with a genius more comprehensive and a taste more re- 
fined, this young prince was to Kao Tsu what Alexander 
was to Philip, or Frederick the Great to the rough Fred- 
erick William. Studying the poets and philosophers by 
the light of his camp-fires, he no sooner found himself 
in undisputed possession of the throne than he addressed 
himself to the promotion of learning. In this he was 
only reverting to the traditions of an empire which from 
the earliest times had always been a worshipper of letters. 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 339 

But Tai Tsung (the name by which he is called in 
history) did not confine himself to the beaten path of tra- 
dition; he issued a decree that men of ability should be 
sought out and brought to court from their retired 
homes and secret hiding-places. His predecessors had 
done the same ; but Tai Tsung formed them into a body 
under the name of Wen Hsiieh Kuan, and installed them 
in a portion of his palace, where, the historian tells us, 
he was accustomed, in the intervals of business and late 
in the hours of the night, to converse with these learned 
doctors. The number of these eminent scholars was 
eighteen, in allusion possibly (though a Confucian would 
repudiate the idea) to the number of Arhans or disciples 
who composed the inner circle of the family of Buddha — 
Buddhism being at that time in high repute. Among 
these the most prominent were Fang Yuan Ling and 
Tu Ju Hui, who were afterwards advanced to the rank 
of ministers of State. We have already seen their names 
in the Ode of Ch'ien Lung, where they are alluded to 
as the typical ancestors of the literary brotherhood. This 
was the germ of the Hanlin Yuan. 

Under previous reigns letters had been valued solely as 
an aid to politics, and scholarship as a proof of qualifica- 
tion for civil employment. But from this time letters 
began to assume the position of a final cause, and civil 
employment was made use of as an incentive to en- 
courage their cultivation. Previously to this the single 
exercise of answering in writing a series of questions 
intended to gauge the erudition and test the acumen of 
the candidate was all that was required in examinations 
for the civil service; but from this epoch taste presided 
in the literary arena, and compositions, both in prose and 
verse, in which elegance of style is the chief aim, be- 
came thenceforth a leading feature in the curriculum. 



340 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

That wonderful net which catches the big fish for the 
service of the Emperor, and allows the smaller ones to 
slip through, was during this dynasty so far perfected 
that in the lapse of a thousand years it has undergone 
no very important change. As might have been expected, 
the epoch of the T'angs became distinguished above all 
preceding dynasties as the age of poets. Li Tai Pei — 
whose brilliant genius was believed to be an incarnation of 
the golden light of the planet Venus — Tu Fu, Han Yu, 
and others shed lustre on its opening reigns. Their works 
have become the acknowledged model of poetic composi- 
tion, from which no modern writer dares to depart ; and, 
under the collective title of the poetry of T'ang, they have 
added to the Imperial crown an amaranthine wreath such 
as no other dynasty has ever worn. Li Tai Pei was 
admitted to the Academy by Ming Huang or Flun 
Tsung; the Emperor on that occasion giving him a feast 
and, as native authors say, condescending to stir the 
poet's soup with the hand that bore the sceptre. 

It is not a little remarkable that the art of printing 
made its appearance almost simultaneously with the 
formation of the Academy and the reorganization of the 
examination system. Originating in a common impulse, 
all three interacted on each other, and worked together 
as powerful agencies in carrying forward the common 
movement. The method of stamping characters on silk 
or paper had no doubt been discovered long before; 
but it was under this dynasty that it was first employed 
for the reproduction of books on a large scale. It was 
not, however, so employed in the reign of Tai Tsung. 
That monarch, resolving to found a library that should 
surpass in extent and magnificence anything that had been 
known in the past, was unable to imagine a more expe- 
ditious, or, at least, a more satisfactory, method of pro- 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 341 

ducing books than the slow process of transcription. 
For this purpose a host of pencils would be required ; and 
Tai Tsung, in the interest of his library, made a fresh 
levy of learned men who were elegant scribes as well 
as able scholars. To these, Hun Tsung, one of his suc- 
cessors, added another body of scholars, and combining 
the three classes into one society called it by the name 
of Hanlin, or the " Forest of Pencils " — about a. d. 740 — 
a designation that was now more appropriate than it 
would have been when the number of its members fell 
short of a score. 

When the printing-press was introduced as an auxiliary 
in the manufacture of books, it relieved the Imperial 
scribes of a portion of their labors, but it did not super- 
sede them. Released from the drudgery of copying, 
they were free to devote their leisure to composition; 
and in China in the eighth century, as in Europe in the 
fifteenth, the art of printing imparted a powerful stimu- 
lus to the intellectual activity of the age. 

Rising, as we have seen, in the halcyon days of Tai 
Tsung, the Hanlin Yuan was not long in attaining its 
full development. In the reign of Hun Tsung it re- 
ceived the name by which it is now known, and through 
twelve centuries, from that day to this, it has under- 
gone no essential modification, either in its objects, mem- 
bership, or mode of operation ; if we except, perhaps, the 
changes required to adapt it to the dupHcate official sys- 
tem of the present dynasty. Its constitution and func- 
tions, as laid down in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, Or Insti- 
tutes of the Empire, are as follows : 

I. There shall be two presidents — one Manchu and 
one Chinese. They shall superintend the composition 
of dynastic histories, charts, books, Imperial decrees, and 
literary matters in general. 



342 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

2. The vice-presidents shall be of two classes ; namely, 
the readers, and the expositors to his Majesty the Em- 
peror. In each class there shall be three Manchus and 
three Qiinese. 

3. Besides these, the regular members shall consist of 
three classes — namely, Hsiu Chuan, Pien Hsiu, and Ch'ien 
Tao — in all of which the number is not limited. These, 
together with the vice-presidents, shall be charged with 
the composition and compilation of books, and with 
daily attendance at stated times on the classic studies of 
his Majesty. 

4. There shall be a class of candidates on proba- 
tion, termed Shu Chi Shih, " lucky scholars," the num- 
ber not fixed. These shall not be charged with any 
specific duty, but shall prosecute their studies in the 
schools attached to the Academy. They shall study both 
Manchu and Chinese. Their studies shall be directed by 
two professors — one Manchu and one Chinese — assisted 
by other members below the grade of readers and exposi- 
tors, who shall act as divisional tutors. At the expiration 
of three years they shall be tested as to their ability in 
poetical composition, the Emperor in person deciding 
their grades, after which they shall be admitted to an 
audience; those of the first three grades being received 
into full membership, and those of the fourth grade, 
which comprises the remainder, being assigned to posts 
in the civil service, or retained for another three years to 
study and be examined with the next class. 

5. There shall be two recorders — one Manchu and one 
Chinese. These shall be charged with the sending and 
receiving of documents. 

6. There shall be two librarians — one Manchu and 
one Chinese. These shall be charged with the care of the 
books and charts. 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 343 

7. There shall be four proof-readers — two Manchus 
and two Chinese. These shall attend to the revision and 
■collection of histories, memorials, and other literary 
compositions. 

8. There shall be forty-four clerks — forty Manchus 
and four from the Chinese Banners. These shall be 
employed in copying and translation. 

9. The expositors at the classic table (of the Em- 
peror) shall be sixteen in number — eight Manchus and 
eight Chinese. The Manchus must be officers who have 
risen from the third rank or higher. The Chinese also 
must be of the third rank or higher, having risen from 
the Academy. These shall be appointed by the Emperor 
on the recommendation of the Academy. The classic 
feasts shall take place twice a year — namely, in the second 
and the eighth month ; at which time one Manchu and 
one Chinese shall expound the Book of History, and one 
Manchu and one Chinese shall expound the other classics, 
to be selected from a list prepared by the Academy. 
The subject and sense of the passages to be treated on 
these occasions shall in all cases be arranged by consul- 
tation with the presidents of the Academy, and laid before 
the Emperor for his approval. When the Emperor 
visits the '' Palace of Literary Glory," these expositors, 
together with the other officers, shall perform their pros- 
trations at the foot of the steps, after which their going 
in and out shall be according to the form prescribed in 
the Code of Rites. When they shall have finished their 
expositions, they shall respectfully listen to the discourses 
of the Emperor. 

10. The daily expositors shall be twenty-eight Man- 
chus and twelve Chinese. They shall be above the grade 
of Ch'ien Tao and below that of President, and may dis- 
charge this duty without resigning their original offices. 



344 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

11. Prayers and sacrificial addresses for several occa- 
sions shall be drawn up by the Hanlin and submitted to 
the Emperor for his approval. These occasions are the 
following, namely : at the Altar of Heaven ; the Ancestral 
Temple; the Imperial Cemeteries; the Altar of Agri- 
culture; sacrifices to mountains, seas, and lakes, and to 
the ancient sage Confucius. 

12. The Hanlin shall respectfully prepare honorary 
titles for the dowager empresses : they shall also draw up 
patents of dignity for the chief concubines of the late 
emperor ; forms of investiture for new empresses and the 
chief concubines of new emperors ; patents of nobility for 
princes, dukes, generals, and for feudal states; together 
with inscriptions on State seals — all of which shall first 
be submitted for the Imperial approbation. 

13. The Hanlin shall respectfully propose posthu- 
mous titles for deceased emperors, together with monu- 
mental inscriptions and sacrificial addresses for those 
who are accorded the honor of a posthumous title — all 
of which shall be submitted to the Emperor for approval. 

14. The presidents of the Hanlin shall be ex officio 
vice-presidents of the Bureau of Contemporary History, 
in which the Hanlin of subordinate grades shall assist as 
compilers and composers, reverentially recording the 
sacred instructions (of the Emperor). 

15. Prescribes the order of attendance for the Hanlin 
when the Emperor appears in public court. 

16. Prescribes the number and quality of those of the 
HanHn who shall attend his Majesty during his sojourn 
at the Yuan Ming Yuan (Summer Palace). 

17. Provides that those members of the Hanlin whose 
duty it is to accompany his Majesty on his various 
journeys beyond the capital shall be recommended by the 
presidents of the Academy. 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 345 

18. Provides that, when the Emperor sends a deputy 
to sacrifice to Confucius, certain senior members of the 
Academy shall make offerings to the twelve chief 
disciples of the Sage. 

19. The Hanlin, in conjunction with the Board of 
Rites, shall copy out and publish the best specimens 
of the essays produced in the provincial and metropolitan 
examinations. 

20. Prescribes the form to be used in reporting or 
recommending members for promotion, and provides that 
when an examination is held for the selection of Im- 
perial censors, the Pien Hsiu and Ch'ien Tao, on recom- 
mendation, may be admitted as candidates. 

21. Regulates examinations for the admission of pro- 
bationary members. 

22. Admits probationers, after three years of study, 
to an examination for places in the Academy or official 
posts elsewhere. 

23. Provides for examinations of regular members 
in presence of the Emperor, at uncertain times, in order 
to prevent their relapse into idleness. 

24. Provides for the promotion of members who are 
employed as instructors or probationers. 

Such is the official account of the Hanlin as at present 
constituted ; but what information does it convey ? After 
all we have done in the way of explanation, in connec- 
tion with a rather free translation, it still remains a con- 
fused mass of tides and ceremonies, utterly devoid of 
any principle of order ; and, without the help of collateral 
information, much of it would be altogether unintelligi- 
ble. Interrogate it as to the number of members, the 
qualifications required for membership, the duration of 
membership, the manner of obtaining their seats (a term 
which must be used metaphorically of an association in 



346 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

which all but a few are expected to stand), and it is 
silent as the Sphinx. Should one, with a view to satis- 
fying curiosity on the first point, attempt to reckon up the 
number of classes or divisions, to say nothing of indi- 
viduals, the number being in some cases purposely in- 
definite, he would certainly fail of success. Some who 
are enumerated in those divisions are official employes 
of the society, but not members ; and yet there is nothing 
in the text to indicate the fact : e. g., the proof-readers 
are Hanlins, the copyists and translators are not; the 
librarians are Hanlin, the recorders are not. We shall 
endeavor briefly to elucidate these several points. 

Unlike the academies of Europe, which are voluntary 
associations for the advancement of learning under royal 
or imperial patronage, the Hanlin is a body of civil func- 
tionaries, a government organ, an integral part of the 
machinery of the State; its mainspring, as that of every 
other portion, is in the throne. Its members do not seek 
admission from love of learning, but for the distinction 
it confers, and especially as a passport to lucrative em- 
ployment. They are consequently in a state of perpetual 
transition, spending from six to ten years in attendance 
at the Academy, and then going into the provinces as 
triennial examiners, as superintendents of education, or 
even in civil or military employments which have no 
special relation to letters. In all these situations they 
proudly retain the title of members of the Imperial 
Academy ; and, in their memorials to the throne, one may 
sometimes see it placed above that of provincial treasurer 
or judge. 

There are, moreover, several yamens in the capital that 
are manned almost exclusively from the members of the 
Hanlin. Of these the principal are the Chan Shih Fu and 
the Ch'i Chii Ch'u; both of which are, in fact, nothing 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 347 

more than appendages of the Academy. The former, the 
name of which affords no hint of its functions, appears to 
bear some such relation to the heir-apparent as the 
HanHn does to the Emperor. The beggarly building in 
which its official meetings are held may be seen on the 
banks of the canal opposite to the British Legation.* 
It is, nevertheless, regarded as a highly aristocratic body, 
and gives employment to a score or so of Academicians. 
The other, which may be described as the Bureau of 
Daily Record, employs some twenty more of the Hanlins 
in the capacity of Boswells to the reigning Emperor, their 
duty being to preserve a minute record of all his words 
and actions. 

Among the Imperial censors, who form a distinct 
tribunal, a majority perhaps are taken from the ranks of 
the Hanlin, but they are not exclusively so; while the 
higher members of the Hanlin, without being connected 
with the censorate, are ex officio counsellors to his 
Majesty. Of those whose names are on the rolls as active 
members of the Academy in regular attendance on its 
meetings, the number does not exceed three or four 
score; though on great occasions, such as the advent 
of an emperor, the ex-members who are within reach are 
called in and swell the number to twice or thrice that 
figure. Besides these are the probationers or candidates, 
to the number of a hundred or more, who pursue their 
studies for three years under the auspices of the Acad- 
emy, and then stand examination for membership. If 
successful, they take their places with the rank and file 
of the Imperibil scribes ; otherwise, they are assigned 
posts in the civil service, such as those of sub-prefect, 
district magistrate, etc., carrying with them in every 
position the distinction of having been connected, for 

* Used as a refuge for native Christians in the summer of 1900. 



348 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

however brief a time, with the Imperial Academy. With- 
out counting those rejected candidates, whose claim to 
the title is more than doubtful, the actual and passed 
members probably do not fall short of five hundred. 

The qualifications for membership are two — natural 
talent and rare acquisitions in all the departments of 
Chinese scholarship; but of these we shall treat more at 
length hereafter. The new members are not admitted 
by vote of the association, nor appointed by the will of 
their Imperial master. The scats in this Olympus are put 
up to competition, and, as in the Hindu mythology, the 
gifted aspirant, though without name or influence, and 
in spite of opposition, may win the immortal amreet. 
None enter as the result of capricious favor, and no one 
is excluded in consequence of unfounded prejudice. 

The Hanlin Yuan has not, therefore, like the Institute 
of France, a long list of illustrious names who acquire 
additional distinction from having been rejected or over- 
looked; neither does it suffer from lampoons sucH as 
that which a disappointed poet fixed on his own tomb- 
stone at the expense of the French Academy — 

" Ci-glt Piron, qui ne fut rien, 
Pas meme academicien." 

In the Chinese Academy the newly initiated has the proud 
consciousness that he owes everything to himself, and 
nothing to the complaisance of his associates or the 
patronage of his superiors. 

Of the duties of the Hanlin, these official regulations 
afford us a better idea — indicating each line of intel- 
lectual activity, from the selection of fancy names for 
people in high position up to the conducting of pro- 
vincial examinations and the writing of national histories ; 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 349 

but the advancement of science is not among them. They 
do nothing to extend the boundaries of human knowl- 
edge, simply because they are not aware that after the 
achievements of Confucius and the ancient sages any 
new world remains to be conquered. The former Em- 
peror, by special decree, referred to the Academy the 
responsibility of proposing honorific titles for the em- 
presses regent. The result was the pair of euphonious 
pendants, K'ang I and Kang Ching, with which the 
Imperial ladies were decorated on retiring from the 
regency ; and we are left to imagine the anxious deliber- 
ations, the laborious search for precedents, the minute 
comparison of the historical and poetical allusions in- 
volved in each title, before the learned body were able to 
arrive at a decision. Since that date the surviving 
Dowager has been honored by twelve syllables additional. 
The composition of prayers to be used by his Majesty 
or his deputies on sundry occasions, and the writing of 
inscriptions for the temples of various divinities, in ac- 
knowledgment of services, are among the lighter tasks of 
the Hanlin. They are not, however, like that above 
referred to, of rare occurrence. Ambitious of anything 
that can confer distinction on their respective localities, 
the people of numerous districts petition the throne to 
honor the temple where they worship by the gift of an 
Imperial inscription. They ascertain that some time 
within the past twenty years the divinity there worshipped 
has interfered to prevent a swollen river from bursting 
its banks ; to avert a plague of locusts, or arrest a pro- 
tracted drought; or, by a nocturnal display of spectral 
armies, to drive away a horde of rebels. They report the 
facts in the case to their magistrates, who verify them, 
and forward the application to the Emperor, who in turn 
directs the members of the Hanlin to write the desired 



350 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

inscription. Cases of this kind abound in the Peking 
Gazette ; one of those best known to foreigners being that 
of Sze T'ai Wang at Tientsin, whose merit in checking, 
under the avatar of a serpent, the disastrous floods of 
1871 obtained from the Emperor the honor of a com- 
memorative tablet written by the doctors of the HanHn. 

If to these we add the scrolls and tablets written by 
Imperial decree for schools and charitable institutions 
throughout the Empire, we must confess that the Hanlin 
Yuan might earn for itself the title of Academy of 
Inscriptions in a sense somewhat different from that in 
which the term is employed in the Western World. In- 
deed, so disproportionate is the space allotted in the con- 
stitution to these petty details, that the reader, judging 
from that document alone, would be liable to infer that 
the Academicians were seldom burdened with any more 
serious employment. But let him go into one of the 
great libraries connected with the court (unhappily not 
yet accessible to the foreign student), or even to the 
great book-stores of the Chinese city, and he will learn 
at a glance that the Hanlin is not a mere piece of Oriental 
pageantry. Let him ask for the " Book of Odes ; " the 
salesman hands him an Imperial edition in twenty vol- 
umes, with notes and illustrations by the doctors of the 
Hanlin. If he inquire for the *' Book of Rites," or any 
of the thirteen canonical books, the work is shown him 
in the same elegant type, equally voluminous in extent, 
and executed by the hands of the same inexhaustible 
editors. Then there are histories without number; next 
to the classics in dignity, and far exceeding them in 
extent. 

In addition to work of this kind, which is constant as 
the stream of time, the Hanlin supplies writers and editors 
for all the literary enterprises of the Emperor. Some of 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 351 

these are so vast that it is safe to say no people would 
undertake them but those who erected the Great Wall 
and excavated the Grand Canal; nor would China have 
had the courage to face them had she not kept on foot 
as a permanent institution a standing army of learned 
writers. 

Two of these colossal enterprises distinguish the bril- 
liant prime of the present dynasty ; while a third, of pro- 
portions still more huge, dates back to the second reign 
of the Mings. This last is the Yung Lo Ta Tien, a cyclo- 
paedic digest of the Imperial library, which at that time 
contained 300,000 volumes. There were employed in the 
task 2169 clerks and copyists, under the direction of a 
commission consisting of three presidents, five vice-presi- 
dents, and twenty sub-directors. The work, when com- 
pleted, contained 22,937 books, or about half that number 
of volumes. It was never printed as a whole, and two 
of the three manuscript copies, together with about a 
tenth part of the third, were destroyed by fire in the con- 
vulsions that attended the overthrow of the Mings.* 

In the reign of K'ang Hsi (latter part of the seven- 
teenth century) a similar compilation was executed, num- 
bering 6000 volumes and beautifully printed on movable 
copper types, with the title of Vu Shu Chi Ch'eng. 

About a century later, under Ch'ien Lung, a still larger 
collection, intended to supplement the former, and pre- 
serve all that was most valuable in the extant literature, 
was printed on movable wooden types with the title of 
S:2e K'u Ch'iian Shu. These two collections reproduce a 
great part of the preceding ; nevertheless great pains have 
been taken to copy out and preserve the original work. 
A commission of members of the Hanlin was appointed 

* This third copy was almost totally destroyed with the rest of 
the library, June, 1900. 



35a THE LORE OF CATHAY 

for this purpose by Ch'ien Lung, and a copy of the work, 
it is said, now forms a part of the HanHn library. In this 
connection we may mention two other great works exe- 
cuted under the Mings, which have been reproduced by 
the present dynasty in an abridged or modified form. 
While the codification of the laws found in Yung Lo a 
Chinese Justinian, it found its Tribonians among the doc- 
tors of the Academy. The " Encyclopaedia of Philoso- 
phy," compiled by the Hanlin under Yung Lo, the second 
of the Mings, was abridged by the Hanlin, under K'ang 
Hsi, the second of the Ch'ings. A still more important 
labor of the Hanlin, performed by order of the last- 
named illustrious ruler, was the dictionary which bears his 
name — a labor more in keeping with its character as a 
literary corporation. 

Thiers speaks of the French Academy as having la 
mission a regler la marche de la langue. It did this by 
publishing its famous dictionary ; and about the same time 
the members of the Hanlin were performing a similar 
task for the language of China, by preparation of the great 
dictionary of K'ang Hsi — a work which stands much 
higher as an authority than does the Dictionnaire de V 
Academie Frangaise. A small work, not unworthy of 
mention in connection with these grave labors, is the 
Sacred Edict, which goes under the name of K'ang Hsi. 
It is not, however, the composition of either K'ang Hsi or 
Yung Cheng, but purely a production of Hanlin pencils. 
In the Memoirs of the Academy we find a decree assign- 
ing the task and prescribing the mode of performance : 

" ' Taking,' says the Emperor, ' the sixteen edicts (or 
maxims of seven words each) of our sacred ancestor sur- 
named the Benevolent for a basis, we desire to expand 
and illustrate their meaning, for the instruction of our 
soldiers and people. Let the members of the Hanlin 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 353 

compose an essay, of between five and six hundred char- 
acters, on each text, in a plain and lucid style, shunning 
alike the errors of excessive polish and rusticity. Let 
the same text be given to eight or nine persons, each of 
whom will prepare a discourse, and hand it in in a 
sealed envelope.' " 

From this it appears that the sixteen elegant discourses 
which compose the body of that work are selections 
from over a hundred — the picked performances of picked 
men. 

In the early part of the Manchu dynasty, the Hanlin 
were much engaged in superintending the translation of 
Chinese works into Manchu, a language now so little 
understood by the Tartars of Peking that those volumi- 
nous versions have almost ceased to be of any practical 
value. Under the present reign the learned doctors have 
been working somewhat in a different direction, showing 
that the Chinese are not so incapable of innovation as is 
usually supposed. A minority reign naturally suggested 
the want of a royal road to the acquisition of knowledge ; 
our Hanlin doctors were accordingly directed to supply 
his Majesty with copies of History made easy and the 
Classics made easy. The mode of making easy was a 
careful rendering into the Mandarin or court dialect — a 
style which these admirable doctors disdain as much as 
the mediaeval scholars of Europe did the vernacular of 
their day. May we not hope that these works, after edu- 
cating the Emperor, will, like those prepared by the 
Jesuits (for the Dauphin), be brought to the light for 
the instruction of his people? 

As it is intended here to indicate the variety rather 
than the extent of the literary labors of the Hanlin, these 
remarks would be incomplete if they did not refer to their 
poetry. They are all poets ; each a laureate, devoting his 



354 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

talents to the glorification of his Imperial patron. Swift 
said of an EngHsh laureate, 



** Young must torture his invention 
To flatter knaves, or lose a pension." 

In China the office is not held on such a condition. 
Sage emperors have been known to strike out with their 
own pen the finest compliments offered them by their 
official bards. Ch'ien Lung, as we have seen, felt it 
necessary to warn the Hanlin against the prevailing vice 
of poets and pensioners. In China poetry is put to a 
better purpose; Imperial decrees and official proclama- 
tions are often expressed in verse, for the same reason 
that induced Solon to borrow the aid of verse in the pro- 
mulgation of his laws. Didactic compositions in verse are 
without number, and for the most part as dry as 
Homer's catalogue of the fleet. A popular cyclopaedia 
for instance, in over a score of volumes, treats of all 
imaginable subjects in a kind of irregular verse called fu. 

Employed as scribes and editors, it would be too much 
to expect that the Hanlin should distinguish themselves 
for originality. It is a rare thing for an original work 
to spring from the brain of an Academician. In imita- 
tion of Confucius, they might inscribe over their door, 
" We edit, but we do not compose." 

" On entering this hall," said M. Thiers, on taking his 
seat in the French Academy, " I feel the proudest recollec- 
tions of our national history awakening within me. Here 
it is that Corneille, Bossuet, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, 
one after another, came and took their seats; and here 
more recently have sat Laplace and Cuvier. . . . 
Three great men, Laplace, Lagrange, and Cuvier, opened 
the centur)^ ; a numerous band of young and ardent intel- 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 355 

lects have followed in their wake. Some study the prime- 
val history of our planet, thereby to illustrate the history 
of its inhabitants; others, impelled by the love of hu- 
manity, strive to subjugate the elements in order to 
ameliorate the condition of man; still others study all 
ages and traverse all countries, in hopes of adding 
something to the treasures of intellectual and moral 
philosophy. . . . Standing in the midst of you, the 
faithful and constant friends of science, permit me to 
exclaim, happy are those that take part in the noble labors 
of this age ! " 

In this passage we have a true portraiture of the spirit 
that animates the peerage of the Western intellect; they 
lead the age in every path of improvement, and include in 
their number those whom a viceroy of Egypt felicitously 
described, not as peers, but as les tetes couronnees de la 
science. How different from the drowsy routine which 
prevails in the chief tribunal of Chinese learning. Of all 
this the Chinese Academician has no conception ; he is 
an anachronism, his country is an anachronism, as far in 
the rear of the world's great march as were the people 
of a secluded valley, mentioned in Chinese literature, who, 
finding there an asylum from trouble and danger, declined 
intercourse with the rest of mankind, and after the lapse 
of many centuries imagined that the dynasty of Han was 
still upon the throne. 

It is doing our Hanlin a species of injustice to compare 
him with the Academicians, or even with the commonalty 
of the West, in a scientific point of view ; for science is 
just the thing which he does not profess, and that gen- 
eral information which is regarded as indispensable by 
the average intelligence of Christendom is to the Hanlin 
a foreign currency, which has no recognized value in the 
market of his country ; nevertheless, we shall proceed to 



356 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

interrogate him as to his information on a few points, 
merely for the sake of bringing to view the actual con- 
dition of the educated mind of China. 

In history he can recite with familiar ease the dynastic 
records of his own country for thousands of years; but 
he never heard of Alexander or Caesar or the first 
Napoleon. Of the third Napoleon he may have learned 
something from a faint echo of the catastrophe at Sedan, 
certainly not from the missions of Burlingame or Ch'ung 
Hao — events that are as yet too recent to have reached 
the ears of these students of antiquity, who, whatever 
their faults, are not chargeable with being rerum novarum 
avidi. 

In geography he is not at home even among the prov- 
inces of China proper, and becomes quite bewildered when 
he goes to the north of the Great Wall. Of Columbus 
and the New World he is profoundly ignorant, not know- 
ing in what part of the globe lies the America of which 
he may have heard as one among the Treaty Powers. 
With the names of England and France he is better 
acquainted, as they have left their record in open ports 
and ruined palaces. Russia he thinks of as a semi-bar- 
barous state, somewhere among the Mongolian tribes, 
which formerly brought tribute, and was vanquished in 
conflict — her people being led in triumph by the prowess 
of K'ang Hsi.* 

In astronomy he maintains the dignity of our native 
globe as the centre of the universe, as his own country is 
the middle of the habitable earth — a conviction in which 
he is confirmed by the authority of those learned Jesuits 
who persisted in teaching the Ptolemaic system three 
centuries after the time of Copernicus. Of longitude 

* The Siberian garrison of Albazin were brought to Peking, 
where their descendants still reside. 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 357 

and latitude he has no conception; and refuses even to 
admit the spherical form of the earth, because an ancient 
tradition asserts that " heaven is round and the earth 
square." To him the stars are shining characters on the 
book of fate, and eclipses portents of approaching calam- 
ity. 

In zoology he believes that tigers plunging into the sea 
are transformed into sharks, and that sparrows by under- 
going the same baptism are converted into oysters ; for the 
latter metamorphosis is gravely asserted in canonical 
books, and the former is a popular notion which he cares 
not to question. Arithmetic he scorns as belonging to 
shopkeepers ; and mechanics he disdains on account of 
its relation to machinery and implied connection with 
handicraft. 

Of general physics he nevertheless holds an ill-defined 
theory, which has for its basis the dual forces that gen- 
erated the universe, and the five elements which profess 
to comprehend the components of all material forms, but 
omit the atmosphere. Of the nature of these elements 
his text-book gives the following luminous exposition : 
namely, that *' the nature of water is to run downward ; 
the nature of fire is to flame upward ; the nature of wood 
is to be either crooked or straight; the nature of metals 
is to be pliable, and subject to change; the nature of 
earth is to serve the purposes of agriculture." * 

So weighty is the information contained in these sen- 
tences that he accepts them as a special revelation, the 
bed-rock of human knowledge, beneath which it would 
be useless, if not profane, to attempt to penetrate. It 
never occurs to our philosopher to inquire why water 
flows downward, and zvhy fire ascends ; to his mind both 
are ultimate facffe. On this foundation human sagacity 

* From the Hung Fan in the Shu Ching, 



358 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

has erected the pantheon of universal science. This it 
has done by connecting the five elements with the five 
planets, the five senses, the five musical tones, the five 
colors, and the five great mountain ranges of the earth ; 
the quintal classification originating in the remarkable 
observation that man has five fingers on his hand, and 
setting forth the harmony of nature as a connected whole 
with a beautiful simplicity that one seeks for in vain in 
the Kosmos of Humboldt. 

This system, which our Hanlin accepts, though he does 
not claim the merit of having originated it, is not a mere 
fanciful speculation ; it is a practical doctrine skilfully 
adapted to the uses of human life. In medicine it enables 
him to adapt his remedies to the nature of the disease. 
When he has contracted a fever on shipboard or in a 
dwelling that has a wooden floor, he perceives at once the 
origin of his malady, or his physician informs him that 
" wood produces fire ; " earth is wanted to restore the 
balance, i. e. life on shore, or outdoor exercise. 

In the conduct of affairs it enables him to get the lucky 
stars in his favor, and, through the learned labors of the 
Board of Astronomy, it places in his hands a guide-book 
which informs him when he should commence or termi- 
nate an enterprise, when he may safely venture abroad, 
and when it would be prudent to remain at home. It en- 
ables him to calculate futurity, and obtain the advantages 
of a kind of scientia media, or conditional foreknowledge ; 
to know how to arrange a marriage so as to secure felicity 
according to the horoscope of the parties; and ascertain 
where to locate the dwellings of the living or the resting- 
places of the dead, in order to insure to their families the 
largest amount of prosperity. 

Tlies'e occult sciences the Hanlin believes implicitly, 
but he does not profess to understand them — contented 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 359 

In such matters to be guided by the opinion of profes- 
sional experts. A Sadducee in creed and an epicure in 
practice, the comforts of the present hfe constitute his 
highest idea of happiness ; yet he never thinks of devising 
any new expedient for promoting the physical well-being 
of his people. Like some of the philosophers of our 
Western antiquity, he would feel degraded by occupa- 
tion with anything lower than politics and ethics, or less 
refined than poetry and rhetoric. " Seneca," says Lord 
Macaulay, " labors to clear Democritus from the dis- 
graceful imputation of having made the first arch; and 
Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the pot- 
ter's wheel." No such apologist is required for our doc- 
tors of the Hanlin, inasmuch as no such impropriety was 
ever laid to their charge. 

The noble motto of the French Institute, Invenit et per- 
fecit, is utterly alien from the spirit and aims of the 
Academicians of China. With them the Golden Age is in 
the remote past; everything for the good of human 
society has been anticipated by the wisdom of the ancients. 

" Omnia Jam ferme mortalibus esse parata." 

Nothing remains for them to do but to walk in the foot- 
steps of their remote ancestors. 

Having thus subjected our Academician to an exami- 
nation in the elements of a modern education, we must 
again caution our readers against taking its result as a 
gauge of mental power or actual culture. In knowledge, 
according to our standard, he is a child; in intellectual 
force, a giant. A veteran athlete, the victor of a hundred 
conflicts, his memory is prodigious, his apprehension 
quick, and his taste in literary matters exquisite. 

" It is a dangerous error," says an erudite editor of 



36o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Sir W. Hamilton, " to regard the cultivation of our fac- 
ulties as subordinate to the acquisition of knowledge, in- 
stead of knowledge being subordinate to the cultivation 
of our faculties. In consequence of this error, those sci- 
ences which afford a greater number of more certain facts 
have been deemed superior in utility to those which be- 
stow a higher cultivation on the higher faculties of the 
mind." 

The peculiar discipline under which the Hanlin is edu- 
cated, with its advantages and defects, we shall indicate 
in another place. Before quitting this branch of the sub- 
ject, we may remark, however, that its result as wit- 
nessed in the Hanlin is not, as generally supposed, a 
feeble, superficial polish which unfits its recipient for the 
duties of practical Hfe; on the contrary, membership in 
the Hanlin is avowedly a preparation for the discharge of 
political functions, a stepping-stone to the highest offices 
in the State. The Academician is not restricted to func- 
tions that partake of a literary character; he may be a 
viceroy as well as a provincial examiner; a diplomatic 
minister as well as a rhymester of the court. 

In glancing over the long catalogue of the Academic 
Legion of Honor, one is struck by the large proportion of 
names that have become eminent in the history of their 
country. 

We have had occasion more than once in the preceding 
pages to refer to the Memoirs of the Academy. These 
records, unfortunately, extend back no further than the 
accession of the present dynasty, in 1644; and they termi- 
nate with 1 80 1, comprising only a little more than one and 
a half of the twelve centuries of the society's existence. 
Published under Imperial auspices in thirty-two thin vol- 
umes, they are so divided that the books or sections 
amount to the cabalistic number sixty-four, the square of 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 361 

the number of the original diagrams which form the 
basis of the / Ching, the national Book of Divination. 

The first thing that strikes us on opening the pages 
of that work is the spirit of imperialism with which they 
appear to be saturated. The transactions of his Majesty 
constitute the chief subject ; the performances of the mem- 
bers are mentioned only incidentally ; and the whole asso- 
ciation is exhibited in the character of an elaborate sys- 
tem of belts and satellites purposely adjusted to reflect 
the splendor of a central luminary. Cast your eye over 
the table of contents and see with what relief this idea 
stands out as a controlling principle in the arrangement 
of the work. 

The first two books are devoted to what are called 
Sheng Yii, Holy Edicts, i. e. expressions of the Imperial 
mind in regard to the affairs of the society in any man- 
ner, however informal. Six books are given to T'ien 
Chang, or Celestial Rhetoric, i. e. productions of the ver- 
milion pencil in prose and verse. Eight books record 
the imposing ceremonies connected with Imperial visits 
to the halls of the Academy ; six books commemorate the 
marks of Imperial favor bestowed on members of the 
Academy; sixteen of the remaining forty-two are occu- 
pied with a catalogue of those members who have been 
honored with appointments to serve in the Imperial pres- 
ence, or with special commissions of other kinds. In the 
residuary twenty-six we should expect to find specimens 
of the proper work of the Academy, and so we do; for 
no less than three books are taken up with ceremonial 
tactics; forms to be observed in attendance on the Em- 
peror on sundry occasions, the etiquette of official inter- 
course, etc. ; these things occupying a place among the 
serious business of the society. Fourteen are filled with 
specimens of prose and verse from the pens of leading 



362 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

members, and one is assigned to a high-flown description 
of the magnificence of the academical buildings ; the rest 
contain a meagre catalogue of official employments and 
literary labors. 

What a picture does this present — a picture drawn by 
themselves — of the highest literary corporation in the 
Empire ! Yet, notwithstanding the enormous toadyism 
with which they are inflated, we do not hesitate to say that 
the twenty-two books especially devoted to the Emperors 
are by far the most readable and instructive portion of 
the Memoirs. They throw light on the personal character 
of these monarchs, exhibit the nature of their intercourse 
with their subjects, and illustrate the estimation in which 
polite letters are held in the view of the government. 

The first chapter opens with the following: 

*' Shun Chi, the founder of the Imperial family, in the 
tenth year of his reign, visited the Inner Hall of the Acad- 
emy, for the purpose of inspecting the translation of the 
Five Classics. On this occasion, his Majesty said, ' The 
virtues of Heaven and the true method of government 
are all recorded in the Book of History ; its principles will 
remain unalterable for ten thousand generations.' " 

The translation referred to was into the Manchu lan- 
guage ; it was made for the purpose of enabling the con- 
quering race the more speedily to acquire the civilization 
of the conquered. 

The young sovereign, then only sixteen years of age, 
shows by this brief speech how thoroughly he had become 
imbued with the spirit of the Confucian books. The 
record proceeds : 

" In the fifth moon of the same year, his Majesty again 
visiting the Inner Hall, inquired of the directors why the 
writers had ceased from their work so early. The Chan- 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 363 

cellor Fan replied, ' This is the summer solstice ; we 
suspend our labors a little earlier on that account.' 

" The Emperor, looking round on his attendant officers, 
said, * To take advantage of some peculiarity of the 
season to make a holiday is natural; but if you wish to 
enjoy repose, you must first learn to labor; you must aid 
in settling the Empire on a secure basis, and then your 
days of rest will not be disturbed. If you aim only at 
pleasure without restraining your desires, placing self and 
family first and the Empire second, your pleasure will be 
of short duration. Behold, for example, our course of 
conduct, how diligent we are in business, how anxiously 
we strive to attain perfection. It is for this reason zve 
take pleasure in hearing the discourses of these learned 
men; men of the present day are good at talking, but 
they are not so good at acting. Why so ? Because they 
have no settled principles ; they act one way to-day and 
another to-morrow. But who among mortals is free 
from faults? If one correct his faults when he knows 
them, he is a good man ; if, on the contrary, he conceal 
his faults and present the deceptive aspect of virtue, his 
errors multiply and his guilt becomes heavier. If zve, and 
you, our servants are diligent in managing the affairs of 
state, so that the benefit shall reach the people. Heaven 
will certainly vouchsafe its protection ; while on those 
who do evil without inward examination or outward re- 
form. Heaven will send down calamity. ... If your 
actions were virtuous, would Heaven afflict you ? Ch'eng 
T'ang was a virtuous ruler, yet he did not spare pains 
in correcting his faults; on the contrary, Cheng Te, of 
the Ming dynasty, had his heart set on enjoyment, and 
clung to his own vices, while he was perpetually finding 
fault with the shortcomings of his ministers. When 



364 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the prince himself refuses to reform, the reformation of 
his people will be impossible, however virtuous his officers 
may be.' " 

This little sermon, excepting the preceding brief 
encomium on the sacred books, is all that the Academy 
has thought fit to preserve of the discourses of Shun Chi. 
His son, the illustrious K'ang Hsi, fills a large space in the 
Memoirs. Here are a few extracts, by way of specimens : 

" The Emperor K'ang Hsi, in the ninth year of his reign 
(the fifteenth of his age), said to the officers of the Board 
of Rites, * If one would learn the art of government, he 
must explore the classic learning of the ancients. When- 
ever zve can find a day of leisure from affairs of state, 
we spend it in the study of the classics. Reflecting that 
what is called Classic Feast and Daily Exposition are 
important usages, which ought to be revived, you are re- 
quired to examine and report on the necessary 
regulations.' " 

In his twelfth year, his Majesty said to the Academician 
Fu Ta Li, " To cherish an inquiring mind is the secret of 
progress in learning. If a lesson be regarded as an empty 
form, and when finished, be dismissed from the thoughts, 
what benefit can there be to heart or life? As for us, 
when our servants (the Hanlin) are through with their 
discourses, zve always reflect deeply on the subject- 
matter, and talk over with others any new ideas we may 
have obtained ; our single aim. being a luminous per- 
ception of the truth. The intervals of business, whether 
the weather be hot or cold, zve occupy in reading and 
writing." 

So saying, his Majesty exhibited a specimen of his 
penmanship, remarking that calligraphy was not the 
study of a prince, but that he found amusement in it. 

In the ninth moon of the same year, his Majesty said 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 365 

to Hsiang Tze Lii, " The precept in the Ta Hsileh, 
on the study of things, is very comprehensive; it is not 
to be limited to mathematical inquiries and mechanical 
contrivances." 

Again he said, " Heaven and earth, past and present, 
are governed by one law. Our aim should be to give our 
learning the widest possible range, and to condense it 
into the smallest possible compass." 

In the fourteenth year, his Majesty, on reading a paper 
of the Hanlin, and finding himself compared to the 
Three Kings and Two Emperors (of ancient times), 
condemned the expression as a piece of empty flattery, 
and ordered it to be changed. 

In the sixteenth year, his Majesty said, " Learning 
must be reduced to practice in order to be beneficial. 
You are required to address me with more frankness, con- 
cealing nothing, in order to aid me in carrying into prac- 
tice the principles to which I have attended." 

In the nineteenth year, the Emperor, in bestowing on 
members of the Hanlin, specimens of his autograph, re- 
marked that in ancient times sovereign and subject were 
at liberty to criticise each other, and he desired them to 
exercise that liberty in regard to his handwriting, which 
he did not consider as a model. 

In the twenty-first year, in criticising certain specimens 
of ancient chirography, his Majesty pointed to one from 
the pen of Lu Kung, remarking, " In the firmness and 
severity of these strokes I perceive the heroic spirit with 
which the writer battled with misfortune." 

In the twenty-second year, h's Majesty ordered that 
the topics chosen for the letters of the Classic Feast 
should not, as hitherto, be selected solely with reference 
to the sovereign, but that they should be adapted to in- 
struct and stimulate the officers as well. 



366 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In the twenty-third year, his Majesty was on a journey, 
when, the boat mooring for the night, he continued read- 
ing until the third watch. His clerk — a member of the 
Hanlin — had to beg his Majesty to allow himself a little 
more time for repose; whereupon his Majesty gave a 
detailed account of his habits of study, all the particulars 
of which are here faithfully preserved. 

In the forty-third year, his Majesty said to the High 
Chancellor and members of the Academy, " From early 
youth I have been fond of the ink-stone ; every day writ- 
ing a thousand characters, and copying with care the 
chirography of the famous scribes of antiquity. This 
practice I have kept up for more than thirty years, be- 
cause it was the bent of my nature. In the Manchu I also 
acquired such facility that I never make a mistake. The 
endorsements on memorials from viceroys and governors, 
and Imperial placets, are all written with my own hand, 
without the aid of a preliminary draft. Things of any 
importance, though months and years may elapse, I never 
forget, notwithstanding the endorsed documents are on 
file in the respective offices, and not even a memorandum 
left in my hands." 

In the fiftieth year, his Majesty said to the High 
Chancellors, 

" In former generations I observe that, on occasion of 
the Classic Feast, the sovereign was accustomed to listen 
in respectful silence, without uttering a word. By that 
means his ignorance was not exposed, though he might 
not comprehend a word of the discourse. The usage was 
thus a mere name without the substance. 

" As for me, I have now reigned fifty years and spent 
all my leisure hours in diligent study; and whenever 
the draft of a discourse was sent in, I never failed 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 367 

to read it over. If by chance a word or sentence appeared 
doubtful, I always discussed it with my literary aids; for 
the Classic Feast is an important institution, and not by 
any means to be viewed as an insignificant ceremony." 

Of Yung Cheng, the son and successor of K'ang Hsi, 
the Memoirs have preserved but a single discourse, and of 
that only its opening sentence is worth quoting. His 
Majesty said to the members of the Hanlin, " Literature 
is your business, but we want such literature as will serve 
to regulate the age and reflect glory on the nation. As 
for sonnets to the moon and the clouds, the winds and the 
dews — of what use are they ? " 

The next Emperor, Ch'ien Lung, far surpassed his pred- 
ecessors in literary taste and attainments ; and his reign 
being long (sixty years), his communications to the 
Hanlin are more than proportionally voluminous. Space, 
however, compels us to make our extracts in the inverse 
ratio. Many of the preceding and some which follow 
have nothing to do with the Academy, save that they 
were speeches uttered in the hearing of the Hanlin, and 
by them recorded. This, however, is to the point. 

In the second year his Majesty said to the general 
directors, " Yesterday we examined the members of the 
Academy, giving them for a theme the sentence * It is 
hard to be a sovereign, and to be a subject is not easy.' 
Of course there is a difference in the force of the ex- 
pression ' hard ' and ' not easy,' yet not one of them per- 
ceived the distinction." Here follows an elaborate expo- 
sition from the vermilion pencil, which I must forego, at 
the risk of leaving my readers in perpetual darkness as to 
the momentous distinction. It is, however, but just to 
say that the Emperor intends the paper, not as a scholastic 
exercise, but as a political lesson. 



368 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In the fifth year, his Majesty says he has remarked 
that the addresses of the Hanlin contain a large amovint 
of adulation, and a very small amount of Instruction. 
He accordingly recommends them to modify their style. 
Two years later he complains that " the Hanlin often 
make a text from the sacred books a stalking-horse for 
irrelevant matters ; e. g. Chou Chang Fa, in lecturing on 
the Book of Rites, took occasion to laud the magnificence 
of our sacrifice at the Altar of Heaven as without a 
parallel a thousand years." '' Before the sacrifice," he 
says, 

" ' Heaven gave a good omen in a fall of snow, and 
during its performance the sun shone down propitiously.' 
Now these rites were not of my institution ; moreover, the 
soft winds and gentle sunshine on the occasion were 
purely accidental ; for at that very time the Province of 
Chiangnan was suffering from disastrous floods and my 
mind tormented with anxiety on that account. Let Chow 
Chang Fa be severely reprimanded, and let the other 
Hanlin take warning." 

Among the remaining speeches of Ch'ien Lung, there 
are three that do him credit as a vindicator of the truth 
of history. In one of them he rebukes the historiogra- 
phers for describing certain descendants of the Mings 
as usurpers, observing that they came honestly by their 
titles, though they were not able to maintain them. In 
another he criticises the ignorance and wilful perversions 
of facts exhibited by Chinese historians in their account 
of the three preceding Tartar dynasties — namely, the 
Liao, Chin, and Yuan. And in the last he reproves his 
own writers of history for omitting the name of a meri- 
torious individual who had fallen into disgrace. 

Among the communications of the next Emperor Chia 
Ching (the Memoirs close with the fourth year of his 



THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY 369 

reign), I find nothing of sufficient interest to be worth the 
space it would occupy. 

Thus far the Emperors ; what the HanHn say to them 
in conversation or formal discourse is not recorded. But 
we know that they are so situated as to exert a more 
direct influence on the mind of their master than subjects 
of any other class. They are the instructors of his youth, 
and the counsellors of his maturer years; and this, the 
fixing of the views and moulding of the character of the 
autocrat of the Empire, we may fairly regard as their 
most exalted function. 

But if they influence the Emperor, we see in the pre- 
ceding paragraphs how easy it is for the Emperor to 
influence them. Herein is our hope for the rehabilitation 
of the Academy. Far from being decayed or effete, it 
contains as many and as active minds as at any previous 
period. At present they spend much of their time in 
making " sonnets to the moon ; " but if the Emperor 
were so disposed, he could change all that in a moment. 
He could employ the Hanlin in translating out of Eng- 
lish as well as into Manchu — in studying science as well 
as letters. 

Nor are indications wanting that this change in the 
direction of their mental activity is likely to take place. 
Some years ago Prince Kung proposed that the junior 
members of the Hanlin should be required to attend the 
Tung Wen College, for the purpose of acquiring the lan- 
guages and sciences of Europe. Wo Jen, a president of 
the Hanlin and teacher of the Emperor, presented a 
counter-memorial, and the measure failed. But such is 
the march of events that the same measure, possibly in 
some modified form, is sure to be revived, and destined to 
be finally successful. 

When that time arrives, the example of the Academy; 



370 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

will have great weight in promoting a radical revolution 
in the character of the national education.* 

* After the war with Japan, the younger academicians organized 
a Reform Club, and began to talk about the need of a parliament. 
The club was suppressed by decree, but most of its members 
were still active in the cause of educational reform. On the 
opening of the New University some entered as students of 
foreign languages. 



XIX 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY IN CHINA 

IT is not, perhaps, generally known that Peking con- 
tains an ancient university; for, though certain 
buildings connected with it have been frequently 
described, the institution itself has been but little noticed. 
It gives, indeed, so few signs of life that it is not surpris- 
ing it should be overlooked. And yet few of the insti- 
tutions of this hoary Empire are invested with a deeper 
interest, as venerable relics of the past, and, at the same 
time, as mournful illustrations of the degenerate present. 

If a local situation be deemed an essential element of 
identity, this old university must yield the palm of age 
to many in Europe, for in its present site it dates, at most, 
only from the Yuan, or Mongol dynasty, in the beginning 
of the fourteenth century. But as an imperial institution, 
having a fixed organization and definite objects, it carries 
its history, or at least its pedigree, back to a period far 
anterior to the founding of the Great Wall. 

Among the Regulations of the House of Chou, which 
flourished a thousand years before the Christian era, we 
meet with it already in full-blown vigor, and under the 
identical name which it now bears, that of Kuo Tze Chien, 
or '' School for the Sons of the Empire." It was in its 
glory before the light of science dawned on Greece, and 
when Pythagoras and Plato were pumping their secrets 
from the priests of Heliopolis. It still exists, but it is 
only an embodiment of " life in death : " its halls are 
tombs, and its officers living mummies. 

371 



372 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

In the 13th Book of Choii Li we find the functions of 
the heads of the Kuo Tze Chien laid down with a good 
deal of minuteness. 

The presidents were to admonish the Emperor of that 
which is good and just, and to instruct the Sons of the 
State in the " five constant virtues " and the " three prac- 
tical duties " — in other words, to give a course of lectures 
on moral philisophy. The vice-presidents were to reprove 
the Emperor for his faults (i. e. to perform the duty of 
official censors) and to discipline the Sons of the State in 
sciences and arts — viz., in arithmetic, writing, music, 
archery, horsemanship, and ritual ceremonies. The titles 
and offices of the subordinate instructors are not given in 
detail, but we are able to infer them with a good degree 
of certainty from what we know of the organization as it 
now exists. 

The old curriculum is religiously adhered to, but greater 
latitude is given, as we shall have occasion to observe, to 
the term " Sons of the State." In the days of Chou, this 
meant the heir-apparent, princes of the blood, and chil- 
dren of the nobility. Under the Ta Ch'ing dynasty it 
signifies men of defective scholarship throughout the 
provinces, who purchase literary degrees, and more 
specifically certain indigent students of Peking, who are 
aided by the imperial bounty. 

The Kuo Tze Chien is located in the northeastern angle 
of the Tartar city, with a temple of Confucius attached, 
which is one of the finest in the Empire. The main edifice 
(that of the temple) consists of a single story of im- 
posing height, with a porcelain roof of tent-like curvature. 
It shelters no object of veneration beyond simple tablets 
of wood inscribed with the name of the sage and those 
of his most illustrious disciples. It contains no seats, as 
all comers are expected to stand or kneel in presence 




mmtum 




THE IMPERIAL LECTURE ROOM, OLD UNIVERSITY BUILDING 




PROSPECT HILL WHERE THE LAST OF THE MINGS HANGED HIMSELF 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY 373 

fc>f tHe Great Teacher. Neither does it boast anything in 
the way of artistic decoration, nor exhibit any trace of 
that neatness and taste which we look for in a sacred 
place. Perhaps its vast area is designedly left to dust 
and emptiness, in order that nothing may intervene to 
disturb the mind in the contemplation of a great name 
which receives the homage of a nation. 

Gilded tablets, erected by various emperors — the only 
ornamental objects that meet the eye — record the praises 
of Confucius ; one pronounces him the " culmination of 
the sages," another describes him as forming a " trinity 
with Heaven and Earth," and a third declares that " his 
holy soul was sent down from heaven." A grove of 
cedars, the chosen emblem of a fame that never fades, 
occupies a space in front of the temple, and some of the 
trees are huge with the growth of centuries. 

In an adjacent block or square stands a pavilion known 
as the " Imperial Lecture-room," because it is incumbent 
on each occupant of the Dragon throne to go there at 
least once in his lifetime to hear a discourse on the 
nature and responsibilities of his office — thus conform- 
ing to the letter of the Choii Li, which makes it the duty 
of the officers of the university to administer reproof 
and exhortation to their sovereign,* and doing homage 
to the university by going in person to receive its 
instruction. 

A canal spanned by marble bridges encircles the 
pavilion, and arches of glittering porcelain, in excellent 
repair, adorn the grounds. But neither these nor the 
pavilion itself constitutes the chief attraction of the place. 

Under a long corridor which encloses the entire space 
may be seen as many as one hundred and eighty-two 

* They still discharge these functions in writing, their me- 
morials frequently appearing in the pages of the Peking Gazette, 



374 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

columns of massive granite, each inscribed with a portion 
of the canonical books. These are the ** Stone Classics " 
— the entire '' Thirteen," which form the staple of a 
Chinese education, being here enshrined in a material 
supposed to be imperishable. Among all the universities 
in the world, the Kuo Tze Chien is unique in the 
possession of such a library. 

This is not, indeed, the only stone library extant — 
another of equal extent is found at Hsi An,* the ancient 
capital of the T'angs. But that, too, was the property of 
the Kuo Tze Chien ten centuries ago, when Hsi An was 
the seat of empire. The " School for the Sons of the Em- 
pire " must needs follow the migrations of the court ; and 
that library, costly as it was, being too heavy for trans- 
portation, it was thought best to supply its place by the 
new edition which we have been describing. 

The use of this heavy literature is a matter for specu- 
lation, a question almost as difficult of solution as the 
design of the pyramids. Was it intended to supply the 
world with a standard text — a safe channel through 
which the streams of wisdom might be transmitted pure 
and undefiled? Or were their sacred books engraved 
on stone to secure them from any modern madman, who 
might take it into his head to emulate the Tyrant of Ch'in, 
the burner of the books and builder of the Great Wall? 
If the former was the object, it was useless, as paper 
editions, well executed and carefully preserved, would 
have answered the purpose equally well. If the latter, 
it was absurd, as granite though fire-proof, is not in- 
destructible ; and long before these colunms were erected, 
the discovery of the art of printing had forever placed 
the depositories of wisdom beyond the reach of the bar- 

* The city to which the Empress Dowager and her court retired 
when the Allied troops captured Pekin in 1900. 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY 375 

Larian's torch. It is characteristic of the Chinese to ask 
for no better reason than ancient custom. Their fore- 
fathers engraved these classics on stone, and they must 
do the same. But whatever may have been the original 
design, the true light in which to regard these curious 
books is that of an impressive tribute 10 the sources of 
Chinese civilization. 

I may mention here that the Rev. Dr. Williamson, on 
a visit to Hsi An saw many persons engaged in taking 
'* rubbings " from the stone classics of that city ; and he 
informs us that complete copies were sold at a very high 
rate. The popularity of the Hsi An tablets is accounted 
for by the flavor of antiquity which they possess, and 
especially by the style of the engraving, which is much 
admired — or, more properly, the calligraphy which it 
reproduces. Those of Peking are not at all patronized 
by the printers, and yet if textual accuracy were the 
object, they ought, as a later edition, to be more highly 
prized than the others. A native cicerone whom I once 
questioned as to the object of these stones replied, with a 
naivete quite refreshing, that they were " set up for the 
amusement of visitors" — an answer which I should have 
set to the credit of his ready wit, if he had not proceeded 
to inform me that neither students nor editors ever come 
to consult the text, and that " rubbings " are never taken. 

In front of the temple stands a forest of columns of 
scarcely inferior interest. They are three hundred and 
twenty in number, and contain the university roll of 
honor, a complete list of all who since the founding of 
the institution have attained to the dignity of the doc- 
torate. Allow to each an average of two hundred names, 
and we have an army of doctors sixty thousand strong! 
(By the doctorate I mean the third or highest degree.) 
All these received their investiture at the Kuo Tze Chien 



376 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

and, throwing themselves at the feet of its president, 
enrolled themselves among the " Sons of the Empire/* 
They were not, however — at least the most of them were 
not — in any proper sense alumni of the Kuo Tze Chien, 
having pursued their studies in private, and won their 
honors by public competition in the halls of the Civil- 
service Examining Board. 

This granite register goes back for six hundred years ; 
but while intended to stimulate ambition and gratny 
pride, it reads to the new graduate a lesson of humility — 
showing him how remorselessly time consigns all human 
honors to oblivion. The columns are quite exposed, and 
those that are more than a century old are so defaced by 
the weather as to be no longer legible. 

If in the matter of conferring degrees the Kuo Tze 
Chien " beats the world," it must be remembered that it 
enjoys the monopoly of the Empire — so far as the 
doctorate is concerned. 

Besides these departments, intended mainly to com- 
memorate the past, there is an immense area occupied by 
lecture-rooms, examination-halls, and lodging-apart- 
ments. But the visitor is liable to imagine that these, too, 
are consecrated to a monumental use — so rarely is a stu- 
dent or a professor to be seen among them. Ordinarily 
they are as desolate as the halls of Baalbec or Palmyra. 
In fact, this great school for the " Sons of the Empire " 
has long ceased to be a seat of instruction, and degener- 
ated into a mere appendage of the civil-service competi- 
tive examinations, on w^hich it hangs as a dead weight, 
corrupting and debasing instead of advancing the stand- 
ard of national education. 

By an old law, made for the purpose of enhancing the 
importance of this institution, the possession of a scholar- 
ship carries with it the privilege of wearing decorations 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY 377 

which belong to the first degree, and of entering the lists 
to compete for the second. This naturally caused such 
scholarships to be eagerly sought for, and eventually had 
the effect of bringing them into market as available stock 
on which to raise funds for government use. A price 
was placed on them, and like the papal indulgences, they 
were vended throughout the Empire. 

Never so high as to be beyond the reach of aspiring 
poverty, their price has now descended to such a figure 
as to convert these honors into objects of contempt. In 
Peking it is twenty-three taels (about thirty silver dol- 
lars), but in the provinces they can be had for half that 
sum. Not long ago one of the censors expostulated 
with his Majesty on the subject of these sales. He ex- 
pressed in strong language his disgust at the idea of clod- 
hoppers and muleteers appearing with the insignia of 
literary rank, and denounced in no measured terms the 
cheap sale of ranks and offices generally. Still — and the 
fact is not a little curious — it was not the principle of 
selling which he condemned, but that reckless degrada- 
tion of prices which had the effect of spoiling the market. 

It is not our purpose to take up the lamentation of this 
patriotic censor, or to show how the opening of title and 
office brokeries lowers the credit and saps the influence 
of the government. Yet this traffic has a close relation 
to the subj ect in hand ; for, whatever rank or title may be 
the object of purchase, a university scholarship must of 
necessity be purchased along with it, as the root on 
which it is grafted. Accordingly the flood-gates of 
this fountain of honors are kept wide open, and a very 
deluge of diplomas issues from them. A year or two ago 
a hundred thousand were sent into the provinces at one 
time ! 

The scholars of this old institution accordingly out- 



378 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

number those of Oxford or Paris in their pahniest days. 
But there are thousands of her adopted children who 
have never seen the walls of Peking, and thousands more 
within the precincts of the capital who have never entered 
her gates. 

Those who are too impatient to wait the slow results of 
competition in their native districts are accustomed to 
seek at the university the requisite qualifications for 
competing for the higher degrees. These qualifications 
are not difficult of attainment — the payment of a trifling 
fee and submission to a formal examination being all that 
is required. 

For a few weeks previous to the great triennial ex- 
aminations, the lodging-houses of the university are filled 
with students who are '' cramming " for the occasion. At 
other times they present the aspect of a deserted village. 

After the accession of the Manchu Tartars in 1644, eight 
schools or colleges were established for the benefit of the 
eight tribes or banners into which the Tartars of Peking 
are divided. They were projected on a liberal scale, and 
affiliated to the university, their special object being to 
promote among the rude invaders a knowledge of Chi- 
nese letters and civilization. Each was provided with a 
staff of five professors, and had an attendance of one 
hundred and five pupils, who were encouraged by a 
monthly stipend and regarded as in training for the pub- 
lic service. The central luminary and its satellites pre- 
sented at that time a brilliant and imposing spectacle. 

At present, however, the system is practically aban- 
doned, the college buildings have fallen to ruin, and not 
one of them is open for the instruction of youth. Nothing 
remains as a reminiscence of the past but a sham exami- 
nation, which is held from time to time to enable the 
professors and students to draw their pay. Some years 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY 379 

ago an effort was made to resuscitate these government 
schools by requiring attendance once in three days, but 
such an outcry was raised against it that it soon fell 
through. Those who cared to learn could learn better at 
home, and those who did not care for learning would 
choose to dispense with their pensions rather than take 
the trouble of attending so frequently. So the students 
remain at home, and the professors enjoy their sine- 
cures, having no serious duty to perform, excepting the 
worship of Confucius. The presidents of the university 
are even designated by a title which signifies libation- 
pourers, indicating that this empty ceremony is regarded 
as their highest function. Twice a month (viz., at the 
new and full moon) all the professors are required to 
assemble in official robes, and perform nine prostrations 
on the flag-stones, at a respectful distance, in front of the 
temple. 

Even this duty a pliable conscience enables them to alle- 
viate by performing it by proxy. One member of each 
college appears for the rest, and after the ceremony 
inscribes the names of his colleagues in a ledger called 
the '' Record of Diligence," in evidence that they were all 
present. 

Negligent and perfunctory as they are, they are not 
much to be blamed; they do as much as they are paid 
for. Two taels per month ($1.50), together with two 
suits of clothes and two bushels of rice per annum, and 
a fur jacket once in three years — these are their emolu- 
ments as fixed by law. Scant as the money allowance 
originally was, it is still further reduced by being paid 
in depreciated currency, and actually amounts to less than 
one dollar per month. The requisition for government 
rice is disposed of at a similar discount, the hungry pro- 
fessor being obliged to sell it to a broker instead of 



380 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

drawing" directly from the imperial storehouses. As for 
the clothing, there is room to suspect that it has warmed 
other shoulders before coming into his possession.* 

Professorships, however, possess a value independent 
of salary. The empty title carries with it a social dis- 
tinction; and the completion of a three years' term of 
nominal service renders a professor eligible to the post 
of district magistrate. These places, therefore, do not 
go a-begging, though their incumbents sometimes do. 

In order to form a just idea of the Kuo Tze Chien, we 
must study its constitution. This will acquaint us with 
the design of its founders, and show us what it was in 
its prime, at the beginning of the present dynasty, or, 
for that matter, at the beginning of any other dynasty 
that has ruled China for the last three thousand years. 
We find it in the Ta CKing Hui Tien, the collected stat- 
utes of the reigning dynasty; and it looks so well on 
paper that we cannot refrain from admiring the wisdom 
and liberality of the ancient worthies who planned it, how- 
ever poorly its present state answers to their original con- 
ception. We find our respect for the Chinese increasing 
as we recede from the present ; and in China, among the 
dust and decay of her antiquated and effete mstitutions, 
one may be excused for catching the common infection, 
and becoming a worshipper of antiquity. 

Its officers, according to this authority, consist of a 
rector, who is selected from among the chief ministers of 
the State; two presidents and three vice-presidents, who 
have the grade and title of ta jen, or " great man," and, 
together with the rector, constitute the governing body; 
two po shih, or directors of instruction ; two proctors ; two 

* These details were obtained from one of the professors, who 
added to his income by serving me as a scribe. 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY 381 

secretaries ; and one librarian ; these are general officers. 
Then come the officers of the several colleges. 

There are six colleges for Chinese students, bearing the 
names of " Hall for the Pursuit of Wisdom," '' Hall of 
the Sincere Heart," '' Hall of True Virtue," " Hall of 
Noble Aspirations," " Hall of Broad Acquirements," and 
" Hall for the Guidance of Nature." Each of these has 
two regular professors, and I know not how many assist- 
ants. There are eight colleges for the Manchu Tartars, 
as above mentioned, each with five professors. Lastly, 
there is a school for the Russian language, and a school 
for mathematics and astronomy, each with one professor. 
To these we add six clerks and translators, and we have 
a total of seventy-one persons, constituting what we may 
call the corporation of the university. 

As to the curriculum of studies, its literature was never 
expected to go beyond the thirteen classics engraved on 
the stones which adorn its halls; while its arts and sci- 
ences were all comprehended in the familiar " Six," which 
from the days of Chou, if not from those of Yao and 
Shun, have formed the trivium and quadrivium of the 
Chinese people. 

It would be doing injustice to the ancients to accuse 
them of limiting the scientfic studies of the Kuo Tze 
Chien by their narrow formulae. The truth is, that, little 
as the ancients accomplished in this line, their modern 
disciples have not attempted to emulate or overtake them. 
In the University of Grand Cairo, it is said, no science that 
is more recent than the twelfth century is allowed to be 
taught. In that of China, the " School for the Sons of 
the Empire," no science whatever is taught. 

This is not, however, owing to any restriction in the 
constitution or charter, as its terms afford sufficient scope 



382 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

for expansion if the officers of the university had pos- 
sessed the disposition or the capacity to avail themselves 
of such liberty. It is there said, for example, " As to 
practical arts, such as the art of war, astronomy, en- 
graving, music, law, and the like, let the professors lead 
their students to the original sources and point out the 
defects and the merits of each author." 

Is there any ground for hope that this ancient school, 
once an ornament to the Empire, may be renovated, re- 
modelled and adapted to the altered circumstances of the 
age? The prospect, we think, is not encouraging. A 
traveller, on entering the city of Peking, is struck by the 
vast extent and skilful masonry of its sewers; but he is 
not less astonished at their present dilapidated condition, 
reeking with filth and breeding pestilence, instead of min- 
istering to the health of the city. When these cloacce are 
restored, and lively streams of mountain water are made 
to course through all their veins and arteries, then, and 
not till then, may this old university be reconstructed and 
perform a part in the renovation of the Empire. 

Creation is sometimes easier than reformation. It was 
a conviction of this fact that led the more enlightened 
among the Chinese ministers some years ago to favor 
the establishment of a new institution for the cultivation 
of foreign science, rather than attempt to introduce it 
through any of the existing channels, such as the Kuo 
Tze Chien, Astronomical College, or Board of Works. 

Their undertaking met with strenuous opposition from 
a party of bigoted conservatives, headed by Wo Jen, a 
member of the privy council, and tutor to his Majesty. 
Through his influence, mainly, the educated classes were 
induced to stand aloof, professing that they would be 
better employed in teaching the Western barbarians than 
in learning from them. Wo Jen scouted the idea that in 



AN OLD UNIVERSITY 383 

so vast an Empire there could be any want of natives 
qualified to give instruction in all the branches proposed 
to be studied. 

The Emperor took him at his word, and told him to 
come forward with his men; and he might have carte- 
hlanche for the establishment of a rival school. He 
decHned the trial, and by way of compromise he was 
appointed rector of the Kuo Tze Chien — the '' School for 
the Sons of the Empire." 

After my return to Peking in 1897, Huang, one of the 
Presidents, exchanged visits with me and expressed an 
earnest desire that something might be done to place the 
education of China on a new footing, but he held out no 
hope for the renovation of the *' Old University." The 
creation of a New University in the following year was 
the realization of a widefelt and long-cherished desire. 



BOOK V 

History 



XX 

THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 

AMONG the various departments into which the 
literature of the Chinese is divided, that which 
in my opinion will best repay the attention of 
European scholars is their History. Yet like their ven- 
erated classic, the Book of Changes, of which they affirm 
that it can never be transported beyond the seas, there 
is reason to fear that their history is not very well 
adapted for exportation. 

In its native form, it may find translators; but they 
will not find readers. Its form requires to be trans- 
formed ; and its very substance to undergo a transubstan- 
tiation, in order to adapt it to the taste of our Western 
public. Beyond a substratum of facts, there is absolutely 
no part of it capable of surviving a transfer to the West- 
em world. 

In the West, the Father of History, or some of his 
editors, prefixed the names of the Muses to the several 
portions of his immortal work — indicating that the idea 
of beauty presided over its composition, and consecrating 
the " art preservative of arts " to the patronage of all the 
Sacred Nine. 

In China, the conception of history is that of a simple 
record ; not that of a work of art. 

In one of the Taoist legends, an old man, who has 
tasted the elixir of immortality, is asked to tell his age. 
" I count it not," he replies, " by years, but by terrestrial 

387 



388 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

cataclysms. As often as a continent sinks into the 
bosom of the sea, or a new world emerges from the ocean, 
I drop a little pebble to commemorate the occurrence. 
The accumulation of pebbles is now so great that they 
fill eleven chambers of my dwelling." Here we have an 
embodiment of the genius of Chinese History — ^not a 
Muse stamping on it the impress of divine beauty, but 
shrivelled age like that of Tithonus, or the wandering 
Jew, preserving a monotonous record of the changes that 
occur in the course of an endless Hfe. 

The accumulation of counters set forth in this legend 
is an expressive emblem of the vastness of China's his- 
toric treasure. In this respect, as Hegel has remarked 
in his Philosophie der Geschichtc, there is a striking con- 
trast between the two great empires of Asia — the Chinese 
having a historical literature more voluminous than that 
of any other nation on earth, and the Hindus none at all. 
The explanation of this phenomenon, if we seek for one, 
will be found in the fact that history is the expression of 
national life — a tissue resembling that of a living organ- 
ism knitting the past and present into a substantial unity. 
Their historical literature, accordingly, more than any- 
thing else, unless it be their educational system, affords an 
index of the greatness of the Chinese people. With them 
the worship of ancestors is an expression of their sense of 
solidarity ; and history a testament, by which they convey 
to posterity the legacy of the past. 

The precautions which they take to secure and to 
transmit the record betoken a proud consciousness that 
the current of their national life is too strong to be swal- 
lowed up by the shifting sands of time. That record, 
though it extends to the people, starts from the throne as 
its centre, and no less than four bureaus or colleges, each 
presided over by learned members of the Hanlin, are 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 389 

charged with collecting and elaborating materials for the 
history of each reign and its nearest predecessors. They 
are the Bureau of Daily Record, the Bureau of Contem- 
porary History ; the Bureau of Dynastic History ; the 
Bureau of Military History. This last, as its name im- 
plies, occupies itself with wars foreign or domestic. 
The Bureau of Daily Record has its representatives al- 
ways at the side of His Imperial Majesty. Whether in 
his palace or on a journey, or in so-called retirement, 
he can no more escape the eye of these official spies than 
Horace's trooper could outrun the tormentor that mounted 
behind him. 

Here is a paragraph from the instructions to the officers 
of this bureau. In respect to laborious minuteness it may 
be taken as a sample of the working of all these colleges : 

'' They (the scribes) are to take note of the down- 
sitting and up-rising of His Majesty ; and to keep a record 
of every word or action. They are to attend His Majesty 
when he holds court and gives audience; when he visits 
the Altar of Heaven, the Temple of Ancestors ; when he 
holds a Feast of the Classics, or plows the Sacred Field ; 
when he inspects the schools, or reviews the troops; 
when he bestows entertainments, celebrates a military 
triumph, or decides the fate of criminals. They must 
follow the Emperor in his hunting excursions ; and during 
his sojourn at his country palace. They will hear the 
Imperial voice with reverence and note its utterances with 
care ; appending to every entry the date and the name of 
the writer. At the end of every month these records 
shall be sealed up and deposited in a desk; and at the 
close of the year they shall be transferred to the custody 
of the Privy Council. 

The Emperor's public acts and public documents con- 
stitute the province of the Shih Lu Kiiarij the Bureau 



390 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

of Contemporary History. The Kuo Shih Kuan, or 
Bureau of Dynastic History, occupies itself with the 
archives of the ruhng house, and the biographies of 
those who are supposed to have shed lustre on its reign. 

These tribunals form an essential part of the machinery 
of government, supplying a check on the extravagance of 
irresponsible power where no other would be available — 
the dread of being held up to the execration of posterity 
operating quite as effectually as the remonstrances of a 
board of censors. The censors are still called by a title 
'' Yil Shih " which means official historian ; and, though 
no longer employed in the production of history, they are 
wont to draw their weightiest arguments from the history 
of the past, and to make their most solemn appeals to 
the history of the future. 

In the palmy days of Chou, when the institutions of the 
empire were in their infancy, a prince proposed to make 
an excursion which had for its object nothing better nor 
worse than his own amusement. One of the censors, 
after vainly employing other arguments to dissuade him 
from his undertaking, solemnly admonished him that all 
his movements were matters of history. The poor prince, 
startled at the thought that to him there could be nothing 
trivial — that his every act was exposed to the " fierce 
light that beats upon a throne " — heaved a sigh of regret, 
and desisted from his innocent purpose, — that of fishing 
on a neighboring lake. 

In those days the historian was as stern and inflexible 
as the Roman Censor morum. In the sixth century be- 
fore our era, there lived in Shantung a General, or Make 
du Palais, named Ts'ui Wu Tze. Herod-like, he took 
possession of the wife of another; his sovereign in turn 
deprived him of the fascinating beauty. The General in 
revenge killed the Prince ; and, when the Court Chronicler 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 391 

put on record this chapter of infamies, the General put 
him to death, and tore the leaf from the Archives of 
State. A brother of the historian renewed the record, 
and suffered death for doing so. A leaf was again torn 
out, and a third brother presented himself, pen in hand, 
to repeat the tale and seal it with his blood. The tyrant, 
touched by his martyr-like boldness, spared his Hfe, and 
submitted to the stigma. The incident is handed down as 
a proof of the unflinching fidelity of ancient historians, 
and by consequence of the trustworthiness of their 
narratives. 

In later times, the chroniclers were not so fearless. 
One, Ch'en Lin, a man of talent, being reproached by 
Ts'ao Ts'ao for drawing his portrait in rather sombre 
colors, replied, while he trembled for his life — " Your 
Highness will forgive me. I was then detained in the 
camp of your enemy, where I had no more freedom of 
choice than the arrow shot from his cross-bow." 

Thackeray says of his pen : 

** It never writ a flattery, 
Nor signed the page that registered a lie." 

With Chinese historians, fear and flattery are influences 
which, more than any others, are liable to deflect their 
needle from the pole. To guard against these two 
sources of error, the notes of every day are dropped into 
an iron chest, which is not to be opened until after the 
death of the reigning prince. Yet this provision is not 
always effectual ; flattery which, addressed to the living, 
would be deemed gross and disgusting, falls like music 
on the ears of their mourning relatives. Hence it was 
that Octavia paid Virgil so magnificently for his lines on 
the dead Marcellus ; hence too, at the close of the last 
reign, the Empress mother welcomed with delight a pane- 



392 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

gyric on the late Emperor, which made a debauched weak- 
ling appear as a star of the first magnitude. Was not 
the Roman Senate accustomed, by solemn vote, to raise 
deceased emperors to the skies, whenever their relations 
succeeded to the throne? The writers of China are 
neither more nor less truthful than the Romans ; and now 
and then we meet among them with an instance of fidelity 
worthy of Rome's best days : e. g., Wu K'o Tu, a Censor 
(his Chinese title means historian), some years ago pro- 
tested against the affiliation of the present Emperor to 
Hsien Feng as an arrangement that leaves his predecessor 
without the solace of a son to sacrifice to his manes. In 
order to give more weight to his remonstrance he com- 
mitted suicide at the tomb of the sovereign whose cause 
he was seeking to serve. Does not this modern instance 
almost suffice to render credible the story of the martyr 
Chroniclers of whom we have spoken ? 

Incedis per ignes 
Suppositos cineri doloso; 

said Horace to Pollio, when the latter was proposing to 
write the history of the then recent revolution. Nobody 
knows better than the Chinese the treacherous thinness 
of the crust that overlies the lava of a dynastic eruption. 
With a view to guarding against the perverting influence 
of fear and favour, they accordingly wait until the last 
scion of an imperial house has ceased to reign before 
compiling, or rather before publishing, the history of a 
dynasty. The history of the Mings was not published 
until after the accession of the Manchus; and the com- 
mission charged with its preparation, devoted no less 
than forty-six years to the task. Official histories are 
always corrected by collation with private memoirs, 
which only wait the sunset of a dynasty to come forth in 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 393 

countless numbers and shed their glow-worm light on the 
events of the period. 

In addition to these ordinary arrangements, there exists 
an extraordinary provision for purifying the stream of 
history. It consists in the appearance, at long intervals, 
of sages with a divine commission to revise the annals of 
preceding centuries, and to post up the doom's-day book 
of the empire. Four have appeared already, viz.: — 
Confucius, in the 6th century, b. c. ; 
Sze Ma Ch'ien, in the 2nd century, b. c. ; 
Sze Ma Kuang, in the nth century, A. D. ; 
Chu Futze, a century later. 

For the advent of the fifth, the world is now on tiptoe. 

Each revision reduces, of course, the quantity of ma- 
terial; but, after all their sifting, there still remains an 
enormous irreducible mass, in which the dead past is 
buried rather than illustrated. 

The historical works of the first of these great editors, 
as expounded by his disciples, extend to 60 books, or 
about 20 volumes. Those of the second, to^ 130 books. 
Those of the third reach the portentous figure of 360. 
And those of the last, though professing to be an abridg- 
ment, amount to 55 books. 

The twenty-four dynastic histories, taken together, 
foot up the tremendous total of 3,266 books, or 1,633 
separate volumes. 

This is sufficiently appalling, but what shall we say of 
the mountains of undigested ores that have not been sub- 
jected to the fires of the smelting furnace? It may help 
us to form an idea of the extent of these crude treasures 
to mention that the history of the last short reign of only 
thirteen years is spread over no fewer than one hundred 
and fifty volumes. Then there are collateral histories for 
that period, which are also official, such as that of the 



394 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Taiping rebellion in 211 volumes; that of the Nienfei 
rebellion in 160 volumes; and those of the three several 
Mohammedan rebellions of Kashgar, Kansu, and Yunnan, 
not yet finished, but certainly far more voluminous. If 
the preceding reigns were only half as prolific in histori- 
cal writings, the productions of the present dynasty would 
alone more than suffice to fill the library of the sea-side 
genius, to say nothing of the twenty-four preceding 
dynasties. 

Nor is this all. To complete the Catalogue, we have 
still to add topographical histories without number. Each 
of the nineteen old Provinces has its official history com- 
piled by a commission presided over by officers of the 
Hanlin. Each department or prefecture has Hkewise its 
proper history ; and this gives us 200 more — not volumes, 
but works ; while, descending to cities of the third order, 
we must reckon a history of from ten to twenty volumes 
for each of nearly two thousand districts. The sum total 
makes a quantity so vast that the mind can no more grasp 
it than it can conceive the distances to the fixed stars. 
We seek in vain for a unit of measure. If the manu- 
scripts of the Alexandrian library kept the fires of the 
Caliph Omar blazing for three months, how long might 
the histories of China supply them with fuel! Tamer- 
lane was in the habit of building pyramids of the skulls of 
his enemies. How high a pyramid, we may ask, might 
be constructed out of these dry bones of past ages? 

In the presence of these enormous accumulations, the 
question arises what estimate are we to form of their 
value ? 

Of their value to the Chinese there is no question. 
Their existence is proof of the esteem in which they are 
held; and the manner in which every species of com- 
position bristles with historical allusions bears witness to 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 395 

the influence they have exerted on the mind of the Chi- 
nese. But are these venerable remains of any value to 
us? If so, in what way may they be made to contribute 
to the literary wealth of the Western world? 

In forming an estimate, we must not forget that our 
standard of value in the criticism of such works differs 
as widely from that of the Chinese as a golden sovereign 
does from the cheap productions of the native mint. Ours 
was coined and stamped for us by no meaner hand than 
that of Lord Bacon, who defines history as '^ Philosophy 
teaching by example." It is philosophy, not science, for 
its data are too indefinite to be made a basis for scientific 
deductions. Philosophy lays no claim to absolute cer- 
tainty, though her very name proclaims her a searcher 
after truth. Her first object is to learn; her second to 
teach ; and if, in the domain of history, she is able to draw 
lessons from the past, it is because she has first learned 
the meaning of those great movements which she pro- 
fesses to expound. 

Judged by this standard, the Chinese have chroniclers, 
but not historians. Their chronicles are composed with 
studied elegance and abound in acute criticism of char- 
acter and events ; but the whole range of their literature 
contains nothing that can be called a Philosophy of 
History. They have no Hegel, who, after reconstructing 
the universe, applies his principles to explain the laws 
of human progress; no Gibbon or Montesquieu to trace 
the decay of an old civilization; no Guizot or Lecky to 
sketch the rise of a new one. They have not even a 
Thucidides or a Tacitus, who can follow effects up to 
causes, and paint the panorama of an epoch. 

The reason is obvious. Without resorting to the sup- 
position that they are by nature deficient in the philo- 
sophic faculty, we find a sufficient explanation of the 



396 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

phenomenon in the faulty model set for them by the 
greatest of their sages. 

With them Confucius, not Sze Ma Ch'ien, is the Father 
of History. His famous Spring and Autumn is not even 
a book of Annals. It is a diary in which all events, great 
and small, are strung like beads on a calendar of days. 
This method, not to speak of the extreme conciseness of 
his style, makes it difficult for his reader to perceive the 
connection of events. Three disciples of his school have 
come to his aid with commentaries ; but all of them follow 
the order of the text, chapter and verse. His continu- 
ators have done the same ; and so have all his successors 
down to our historiographers of the Hanlin, who keep 
their daily journals and imagine they are writing history. 

To have so many pens laboriously employed in taking 
notes is a good way to collect materials ; but those ma- 
terials require a different kind of elaboration from any 
they have ever received at the hands of a native author 
before they become History, in our acceptation of the 
term. 

That their History has remained in the rudimentary 
condition in which it began its career is one more instance, 
in addition to many others, of noble arts which the Chi- 
nese originated in ancient times; and which remained 
ever after in a state of arrested development. 

There are men, says Sir Lyon Playfair, who ''cannot 
see a forest for the trees of which it is composed." 

So the Chinese chronicler, bent on classifying all oc- 
currences in the order of time, fails to perceive the trend 
of colossal movements that sweep over whole nations and 
long centuries. His work in keeping the minutes of the 
day is History only in the sense in which the daily noting 
of the stars is Astronomy. Thousands of diligent ob- 
servers had recorded their observations with apparently 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 397 

fruitless toil, when the eye of Kepler, sweeping over the 
mass of facts, deduced from them the ellipticity of the 
planetary orbits. May we not hope that some master 
mind will yet arise, who shall be capable of pointing 
out the reign of law in this limbo of undigested facts? 

The historian, who shall do this for China, will be a 
native; but, in addition to the culture of the Hanlin, he 
must possess the training of a Western university. The 
students of history, trained in the native schools, are 
all near-sighted. They analyze, with more than micro- 
scopic penetration, particular events and personal char- 
acter; but they are utterly incapable of broad synthetic 
combinations. 

In proof of this, I may point to three immense move- 
ments, each of which is as indispensable to the under- 
standing of the present condition of China as are Kepler's 
three laws to the explanation of the solar system. Yet 
no native writer appears to have grasped the significance, 
or even formed a conception, of any one of them. They 
are: 

I. — The conquest of China by the Chinese; 
2. — The conquest of China by the Tartars; 
3. — The struggle between the centripetal and centrifu- 
gal forces of the empire. 

To the mind of a native, the assertion that China has 
been conquered by the Chinese would be tantamount to 
that venerable item of political news that '' the Dutch 
have taken Holland." To him, they have always been in 
possession, and, so far as he knows, they sprang directly 
from the soil. But the eye of a foreign scholar, trained to 
trace the origin of nations, perceives at a glance that the 
Chinese were a foreign race, who, clothed with the power 
of a higher civilization, undertook the conquest of the 



398 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

water-shed of eastern Asia, about the time the Aryan 
Hindus undertook that of the southern Peninsula. He 
notes the first seats of their power along the banks of 
the Yellow River, indicating that they came from the 
North-west, and followed its course down into the cen- 
tral plain. Whence they came, he may not be able to 
affirm with certainty; but he finds two-thirds of the em- 
pire, even in the classic age of Chou, still in possession 
of savage tribes, who must be regarded as the true 
autochthones. 

He sees these gradually absorbed and assimilated by 
the superior race, until the remnants of the aborigines are 
driven into mountain fastnesses, where they still main- 
tain their independence, and where the conflict of ages is 
still going on. The first chapter in the history of this 
conflict is found in the brief account which the Shu Ching 
gives us of the subjugation of the San Miao, " The three 
aboriginal tribes," by the Emperor Shun. 

The last is not yet written; but a page still wet with 
blood records the subjection of the Miao Tze of Kuei 
Chou, and the extension of Japanese sway in the island of 
Formosa. What a theme for the pen of a native scholar, 
if he could only enlarge the range of his mental vision 
so as to take in a movement of such magnitude ! 

The second of the three great movements is, in its 
origin, almost co-eval with the first, and runs parallel 
with it through all the ages down to the present day. To 
the mind of a native, the Tartar conquest suggests only 
the successful invasion of the Manchus, the now domi- 
nant race. To the wider survey of a western thinker, 
it signifies a persistent attempt, extending through thou- 
sands of years, made by barbarians of whatever name on 
the North of China, to gain possession of a country made 
rich by the industry of its civilized inhabitants. 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 399 

Its first stage was an advance into the interior, in 771 
B. c.^ far enough to destroy the western capital, near the 
site of the present Hsi An Fu. The Emperor and his 
consort perishing in the ruins, the successor of the un- 
fortunate monarch removed his court eastward, to a 
safer situation, in the heart of the Empire. At a later 
period, Lo Yang, the eastern capital, was also sacked by 
Tartars. Still later (not to follow the fluctuations of the 
conflict), when the northern half of the Empire was 
over-run, the court retired from the banks of the Huang 
Ho to those of the Yang Tze Chiang ; whence it removed 
still further south,* in the vain hope of escaping the 
Tartars, who, under the leadership of Kublai, effected for 
the first time the conquest of the whole Empire. 

After a brief tenure, they lost their grand prize, but 
it was reconquered by the Manchus ; and for two cen- 
turies and a half it has remained in their possession. 

The Great Wall, stretching from the sea to the desert 
of Kansu, is a monument of this undying struggle, which, 
from its first inception, has been essentially one long war, 
with only here and there a fitful truce. 

The successive sackings of Rome by Gaul and Vandal ; 
the conquest of Italy by Barbarians from the North ; and 
the removal of the capital to the East, are parallels that 
offer themselves to a European student, and suggest a 
law in the tide of nations, viz, — that the hungry hordes of 
the North manifest, in all ages, a tendency to encroach on 
opulent regions more favored by the sun. 

In all ages, the Tartar invaders have yielded to the 
influence of a higher civilization ; but, on the other 
hand, they have made a deep impression, ethnologically 
as well as politically, on the state of China. 

The Chinese have treated this subject only in a frag- 

♦To Hang Chou. 



400 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

mentary way; but, taken as a whole, in its philosophy 
and its poetry, the conquest of China by the Tartars 
would supply the Muse of History with another of her 
noblest themes. 

The two great movements, which I have now so hastily 
sketched, were conflicts of races ; the third was a conflict 
of principles. The contending forces were those of feudal 
autonomy and centralization. At the dawn of the Chou 
dynasty, not to go further back in the history, an able 
monarch succeeded in holding the vassal Princes in check ; 
while, under his weak successors, they threw off all but 
the semblance of subjection. This struggle for power 
went on for eight centuries, until both combatants were 
overwhelmed by a new foe, who had grown strong in 
conflict with the Tartars of the North ' • 

In this signal event, Chinese historians discern noth- 
ing but the triumph of vulgar ambition ; and they paint 
its author in the darkest colors, as an impious tyrant who 
burned the books of Confucius, and slaughtered his dis- 
ciples. For such unheard-of cruelty, they find no better 
explanation than a partiality for Taoism, coupled with 
a desire to destroy the records of the past, in order that 
he might appear to posterity as the author of a new era. 
Not one of them has understood the significance of Shih 
Huang Ti, the august title by which he proclaimed him- 
self the *' first " of a new order of " autocratic sovereigns." 
Not one of them has perceived that his motive for burn- 
ing the books of Confucius was to obliterate the feudal 
system from the memory of China; and that he cut the 
throats of the Literati to make sure that those books and 
their political doctrines should never re-appear. 

The books did re-appear; but the feudal system, once 
buried in the sepulchre of the slaughtered scholars, has 
had no resurrection. It had been to China the fruitful 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 401 

mother of ag^es of anarchy. Since then she has g^one 
througfh many revolutions; but, thanks to the g"enius of 
Shih Huang^ Ti, she has witnessed no repetition of the 
sad spectacle of a family of States wag:ing- perpetual war. 
His system of centralized power remains the bond of 
the Empire; and the title of Huang: Ti, which he was the 
"first" to assume, still survives as its permanent 
expression. 

This conflict, between the centripetal and centrifug^al 
forces, forms the third great subject,* which the old 
historians have not comprehended, and which waits the 
advent of a writer of deeper insight and more com- 
prehensive grasp. May not some future Hallam show 
the world that Feudalism, which formed such a con- 
spicuous stage in the development of modern Europe, 
has played an equally prominent part in the History of 
China ? 

Is it objected that, unhappily for the study of Chinese 
history, its theatre is too remote to awaken public interest 
in any high degree? Egypt and Babylon are remote in 
one sense, but they are not altogether alien. They are 
only higher up on the stream that expands into the broad 
current of our western civilization. Ancient India is 
remote ; but it forms a part of the same ethnic system with 
ourselves, and, on that account, appeals powerfully to the 
imagination of the European. Chinese history forms a 
stream apart, which has not, it is said, in any way affected 
the state of the western world. 

But is it true that the two streams have flowed down 
through the tracts of time in complete independence of 
each other? Are they not like those ocean currents 
which bear life and beauty respectively to the Eastern* 
shores of the Atlantic, and to those of the Pacific? The 

* The following chapters throw light on two of them. 



402 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Gulf-stream and the Kurosiwo, though flowing through 
opposite hemispheres, are not indifferent to each other. 
They are connected by the pulsations of a common tide. 
So the civilizations of China and Europe, however widely 
separated, have each derived from the other influences as 
real, though occult, as those that throb in the bosom of 
the ocean. To discover their points of contact, and to 
exhibit the proofs of mutual reaction, are among the 
most interesting problems offered to the student of 
Chinese history. 

That the mutual influence of the two civilizations will 
in the future be far greater than it has ever been in the 
past, it is easy to foresee. When China, developing the 
resources of her magnificent domain, and clothing her- 
self with the panoply of modern science, becomes, as she 
must in the lapse of a century or two, one of the three or 
four great powers that divide the dominion of the globe, 
think you that the world will continue to be indifferent 
to the past of her history ? Not merely will some knowl- 
edge of her history be deemed indispensable to a liberal 
education; — while I am in the spirit of prophecy, I may 
as well go on to predict that her language and literature 
will be studied in all our Universities. 

But why should the degree of our interest in any field 
of intellectual investigation be measured by the extent 
of our commercial intercourse? If the Chinese, instead 
of living on a globe, the dominion of which they are 
certain to dispute with our posterity, — were looking 
serenely down upon us from the surface of the moon, 
would that be any reason why we should feel no concern 
for their fortunes ? If, by means of some kind of seleno- 
graph yet to be invented, the moon could convey to us the 
lessons of experience evolved by such a people in the 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 403 

course of their existence, would she not be giving us 
something more substantial than moon-shine? 
Of history it may be said, as of fame — 

" All that we know of it, begins and ends 
In the small circle of our foes and friends." 



To men of science, however, a well authenticated sta- 
tistical history ought to be welcome, even if it came 
from the remotest limb of the Universe. The archives 
of China do not indeed supply us with tabular statements, 
such as would satisfy the demands of Buckle and Quatre- 
fages, but they give us the nearest approach to these that 
it is possible to obtain from distant periods of time. 

In our modem observatories, the sun is made to take 
his daily photograph! If we possessed an unbroken 
series of such pictures, extending back for some thou- 
sands of years, what an invaluable aid it would afford 
towards ascertaining the laws that prevail in that far-off 
world ! Now, to the Chinese chronicler, the emperor is 
the sun, and he has no other object in writing than to give 
us his master's daily picture. Happily, other subjects are 
brought in as accessories that are of more interest to us 
than the person of the sovereign. The territory is de- 
scribed as his hereditary or acquired estate; the people 
come into view as his praedial slaves ; the signs of heaven, 
— sun-spots, star-showers, and eclipses, all so precious to 
the man of science, — are recorded as shadows on the dial 
of imperial destiny. Casting a hasty glance back over the 
long concatenation, we are struck by the fact that Chi- 
nese society is far from presenting an aspect of change- 
less uniformity. Nor have its changes been as monoto- 
nous as those registered by our sea-side watcher. The 



404 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

men have not always worn the bald badge of subjec- 
tion to a foreign yoke; nor have the women, from time 
immemorial, hobbled about on crippled feet. Time was 
when the gods, that greet us at every comer, had not 
yet made their advent ; when books, ink, and paper, were 
unknown (but our historians were even then taking notes, 
for it is they that tell us) ; and when China was confined 
to a small angle of the present empire, the rest being 
occupied by savage races. In those primitive days, even 
the face of nature was different. The hills were covered 
with forest, the plains with jungle, and the lowlands 
with reedy marshes abounding in ferocious beasts. 

Numerous as have been the changes through which 
the Chinese people have passed, they have not been 
always treading in a vicious circle. History shows them 
to have made a general, if not a regular, advance in all 
that constitutes the greatness of a people; so that, in 
the 76th cycle of their chronology, their domain is more 
extended, their numbers greater, and their intelligence 
higher, than at any preceding epoch in the forty centuries 
of their national existence. 

We shall find too that their progress through the ages 
has been, amid all their fluctuations, confined within the 
lines of a fixed and well-defined social organization. In 
the state, a jure divino monarchy has, in all ages, formed 
the nucleus of the government; and the supremacy of 
letters has been secured by making learning the passport 
to office. In the family, the kindred principles of un- 
limited subjection to living parents, and of devout worship 
to dead ancestors, appear of equal antiquity. These four 
are the corner-stones on which the social fabric reposes at 
the present day. 

To those who have the language and the leisure to 
enable them to explore its original sources, I would com- 



THR STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 405 

hiend the study of Chinese History as ahke attractive 
and profitable. With these two conditions, we have ac- 
cess to masses of historic lore, which we may compare, 
not with virgin mines, but with those heaps of silver slag 
left by the old Greeks at the mines of Laurium, from 
which the Germans are now extracting quantities of the 
precious metal that escaped the cruder methods of the 
ancients. Or, to vary the figure, we may liken them to 
the walls of the Colisseum, out of which the mediaeval 
pontiffs quarried stones to build the churches of Rome 
But a histor}^ worthy of the grandeur of the subject can- 
not be produced otherwise than by the combined labors 
of many scholars. 

NOTE 

A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE LEADING DYNASTIES wiU 

help to elucidate the references in this and the following 
chapters. A sketch of history may be found in Cycle of 
Cathay, pp. 251-264. 

1. Period of the Five Rulers, b. c. 2852-2205. Society 
emerges from barbarism. Letters are invented, followed 
by arithmetic and chronology. 

The last two rulers, Yao and Shun, are models of every 
princely virtue. Dominated by love of the people, each 
rejects his own son as unworthy to reign, and adopts a 
capable successor. This is the golden age, when the 
interests of the people rose above those of the reigning 
house. The events of this period are largely legendary. 

2. The Hsia dynasty, b. c. 2205-1766. A calendar of 
days and rites has come down from this epoch which 
shows that social and political institutions were becoming 
crystallized into permanent forms. The whole of China 
had previously been occupied by savage tribes; but the 



4o6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

northern half was now brought under the sway of the 
Chinese rule. Hsia signifies summer; and China is still 
called the " summer land." 

3. The dynasty of Shang, b. c. 1766-1122. Shang sig- 
nifies merchant. It perhaps indicates that with growing 
refinement of manners, commerce became a conspicuous 
factor in social life. The empire was subdivided among 
vassal States ; and the feudal system of government took 
definite shape. 

4. The Chou (round, or complete) dynasty, b. c. 
1122-255. Literature rose and sages appeared. Con- 
fucius was born b. c. 551, and Laotze, founder of the 
Taoist school, a little earlier. Civilization, as the Chinese 
think, then attained its acme, and to this day they remain 
under the domination of the rules and ideals of that 
period. 

5. The Ch'in dynasty, b. c. 255-206. The Ch'ins swept 
away the vassal States, unified the empire and gave it 
the name of China. The Great Wall is their enduring 
monument; but they earned the execration of all ages 
by burning the books of Confucius and slaughtering his 
followers. 

6. The Han dynasty, b. c. 206-A. d. 220. Marked by 
resurrection of Confucian books and revival of letters; 
introduction of Buddhism and completion of the triad of 
religions ; also by extension of the Empire to the bounds 
of China Proper. In honor of these brilliant achieve- 
ments, the people call themselves the " Sons of Han." 

7. Numerous partial or short-lived dynasties, a. d. 220- 
618. A time of division, war and anarchy; these four 
centuries are not distinguished by any conspicuous step 
in the march of progress. During the greater part the 
tendency was to relapse into barbarism. The wars of 



THE STUDY OF CHINESE HISTORY 407 

the Three Kingdoms, with which the period opens, were 
fertile in heroes. One was Kwanti, the God of War. 
It was preeminently the heroic age. 

8. The dynasty of T'ang, A. D. 618-905. In letters, the 
age of poetry; noted for the rise of the drama and the 
formation of the Hanlin Academy, this period is still 
more celebrated for the invention of printing, and the 
diffusion of knowledge. The unsteady hold on the South- 
ern provinces was now confirmed so that the people of 
that region call themselves to this day the " Men of 
T'ang." 

9. The Wu Tai or " Five Dynasties," a. d. 907-960. 

10. The Sung Dynasty, a. d. 960-1278. Noted for the 
rise of speculative philosophy ; and the fixing of the inter- 
pretation of the Confucian classics. A school of acute 
thinkers, beginning with Chao and Chang, culminates 
after more than a century in Chu Futze, who is also the 
Coryphaeus of Chinese Commentators. They show signs 
of having felt the stimulus of Indian thought, but decline 
to adopt anything foreign. They have become the stand- 
ard of orthodoxy in both their philosophy and their her- 
meneutics. A third thing was added to complete the 
yoke of authority, viz. : the reorganization of the civil 
service examination system on its present basis. 

11. The Yuan or Mongol dynasty, a. d. 1260- 1368. 
The Tartars, who from time to time had seized portions of 
China, now established their sway over the whole empire 
under the famous Kublai Khan. Under his reign the 
Venetian, Marco Polo, lived in China and gave the 
earliest detailed description of the country, calling it 
Cathay, as the Mongols do. 

12. The Ming dynasty, a. d. 1368-1644. This period Is 
not remarkable for any intellectual movement except the 



4o8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

steady growth of an already enormous literature, the 
compilation of encyclopaedias and the codification of the 
Laws. 

13. The Ta Ch'ing or Great Pure Dynasty, a. d. 1644 to 
the present time. The Manchu Tartars, a small tribe in 
Liaotung, gradually got possession of that outlying col- 
ony, and with it acquired the civilization of China. The 
Mings having succumbed to internal revolt, they were 
invited to aid in restoring order, and did so by seating 
their own princes on the throne. 

Rivalling the house of Kublai in the extent of their 
dominions, they have surpassed all preceding dynasties 
in the ability and merit of the rulers they have given the 
celestial empire. Theirs has been, on the whole, the 
wisest government that China has ever enjoyed. How 
much longer their lease of power has to run must depend 
on the degree to which they assimilate the principles, arts 
and methods of Western Christendom. Under the 
Manchus, Christianity has acquired a firm foothold in 
China, and science, which came with it, is a powerful 
auxiliary in carrying forward the intellectual conquest. 



XXI 

THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA * 

THE Great Wall, which forms the northern bound- 
ary of China proper, tells of a conflict of races. 
Extending for fifteen hundred miles along the 
verge of the Mongolian plateau, it presents itself to the 
mind as a geographical feature, boldly marked on the; 
surface of the globe. Winding like a huge serpent over 
the crests of the mountains, it seems (to adapt the words 
of Emerson) as if — 

" O'er China's Great Wall bent the sky; 
As on its friend with kindred eye, 
And granted it an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat.'* 

It divides two stages of civilization to-day, as it did two 
thousand years ago. On one side are vast plains un- 
broken by the plough, and occupied only by tribes of 
wandering nomads ; on the other are fields and gardens, 
rich with the products of agricultural industry. Between 
the two, a state of perpetual hostility is inevitable, unless 
restrained by the power of some overshadowing govern- 
ment. This natural antagonism has never failed to show 
itself at every point of contact, the world over. Schiller 

* The name Tartar is incapable of precise definition. It is 
applied in a general sense to all the wandering tribes of the 
North and West. 

409 



4IO THE LORE OF CATHAY 

hints — not in his poems, but in a course of historical 
lectures — that this endless strife of shepherd and culti- 
vator was foreshadowed in the conflict of Cain and Abel. 
History, unhappily, supplies us with an abundance of 
illustrations. Egypt fell a prey to the shepherd kings; 
and in Asia, as in Europe, the inhospitable North has 
always been ready to disgorge its predatory hordes on 
lands more favored by the sun. 

The Chinese of the border provinces were in the 
earlier ages compelled to divide their time between war 
and work, under pain of losing the fruits of their labors. 
Like the pioneers of the Western continent, they never 
allowed themselves to be parted from their defensive 
weapons, and enjoyed life itself only at the price of per- 
petual vigilance. Experience proved that a line of mili- 
tary posts, no matter how closely they might be linked 
together, afforded no adequate security against the 
incursions of homeless wanderers. The Great Wall was 
built, not as a substitute for such posts, but as a supple- 
ment to them. That it served its end, there can be no 
reasonable doubt. So effectually indeed did it protect 
the peaceful tillers of the soil, that an ancient saying 
describes it as the ruin of one generation and the salva- 
tion of thousands. 

From time to time, however, the spirit of rapine, swell- 
ing into the lust of conquest, has swept over the huge 
barrier, as an earthquake wave sweeps over the artificial 
defenses of a seaport — or found means to open its gates. 
Twice has the whole of China succumbed to a flood of 
extra-mural invaders : — The Mongols, under Genghis 
Khan, were aided in passing the Great Wall in the prov- 
ince of Shansi by the treachery of Alakush, a Tartar 
chief, whose duty it was to defend it; and the Manchus, 
who are now in possession of the throne, entered at its 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 411 

eastern extremity, on the invitation of Wu San Kuei, a 
Chinese general, who sought their aid against a rebel who 
had subverted the throne of the Mings. 

Besides the three and a half centuries of Tartar 
domination under these two great dynasties, we find, prior 
to the first of them, three periods of partial conquest. 
From 907 to 1234 a. d., a large portion of the northern 
belt of provinces passed successively under the sway of 
the Ch'i Tan and Nii Chen* Tartar ; from 386 to 532, 
an extensive region was subjected to the Tartar hordes 
of Topa, under the dynastic title of Pei Wei. How or 
where these invaders passed the barrier, it is not worth 
while to inquire. The foregoing examples show that, in a 
time of anarchy, some friend or ally can always be found 
to open the gates. Chung chih ch'eng ch'eng, says a 
Chinese proverb, *' Union of hearts is the best bulwark." 
Without exaggerating the strength of the Great Wall, 
which, through a large part of its extent, is far from 
being the imposing structure which we see in the vicinity 
of Peking, we may still affirm, in the light of history, 
that, had it been backed by forces untainted by treason 
and unweakened by faction, it might have proved suffi- 
cient to shield the country from conquest. Wanting 
these conditions, the wall was powerless for defense ; and, 
notwithstanding its watch towers and garrisons, we have 
before us the astounding fact that the Chinese of the 
northern provinces have passed seven, out of the last 
fifteen centuries, under the yoke of Tartar conquerors. 

Ascending the stream of history to the dynasty of 
Han, which ruled China from 202 b. c. to 220 a. d., i. e., 
for more than four centuries, we find ourselves in pres- 

* Nii Chen or Ju Chih — also called Chin Tartars. The Man- 
chus claim them as their ancestors, the reigning house having 
Aischin (gold) for its family name. 



412 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

ence of the same conflict. The names of the opposing 
parties are changed; but the parties remain, and the war 
goes on. The empire is not conquered by the foreign foe ; 
but it is kept in a state of perpetual terror, by an assem- 
blage of powerful tribes who bear the collective name of 
Hsiung Nu. Bretschneider says they were Mongols 
nomine miitato ; Howorth, in his learned History of the 
Mongols, pronounces them Turks, or more properly Tur- 
comans, the ancestors of the present occupants of Khiva, 
Bokhara, and Constantinople. From the resemblance of 
this name to Hunni, they were formerly supposed to be 
the progenitors of the Magyars. So strong indeed was 
this conviction that, a good many years ago, a follower of 
Louis Kossuth went to China in search of his " kindred 
according to the flesh ; " actuated apparently by the hope 
of inducing them to repeat the invasion of Europe, and 
deliver their brethren from the yoke of the Hapsburgs ! 

The numerous tribes occupying the vast region ex- 
tending from Lake Balkash to the mouth of the Amur — 
diverse in language, but similar in nomadic habits — were 
in the Han period combined under the hegemony of the 
Hsiung Nu, forming a confederation, or an empire, rather 
than a single state. The chief was styled in his own lan- 
guage Shan Yii, a word which the Chinese historians ex- 
plain as equivalent to Huang Ti; and there can be no 
doubt that the haughty emperors of the family of Han 
were compelled to accord the sacred title to their barbar- 
ous rivals. In recent times, their successors (more prop- 
erly successors of the Shan Yu) have hesitated to concede 
it to the sovereign of at least one European empire. 
During the negotiation of the Austro-Hungarian treaty, 
the Chinese Ministers objected so strenuously to the as- 
sumption of Huang Ti, that the heir to a long line of 
Kaisers had to content himself with the first syllable of 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 413 

the title, on the principle that "half a loaf is better than 
no bread." Had his minister been well versed in Chinese 
history what an advantage he might have gained! For, 
in China, a precedent is good for more than two thousand 
years ; and the supposed connection of the Huns and 
Hsiung Nu, though not admitted by ethnology, is, or was, 
sufficiently reliable for the purposes of diplomacy. 

During the Han and succeeding dynasties, the Hsiung 
Nu were held in check mostly by force of arms ; but 
the weaker emperors, like those of Rome, were accus- 
tomed to send their sisters and daughters across the 
frontier, instead of generals; flattering the vanity of the 
barbarians, and replacing military armaments by the 
sentimentalities of family alliance. The incidents con- 
nected with these transactions have supplied rich ma- 
terials for poetry and romance. A popular tragedy is 
founded on the fortunes of Chao Ch'iin, one of the many 
fair ladies who were offered as victims to preserve the 
peace of the borders. The Khan of Tartary, hearing of 
her beauty, demanded her in marriage. The Emperor 
refused to surrender the chief jewel of his harem ; so the 
Khan invaded China with an overwhelming force, but 
he retired to his own dominions when the lady was sent 
to his camp. Arrived at the banks of the Amur, she 
threw herself into its dark waters, rather than endure 
a life of exile at a barbarian court. The wars of those 
times would furnish materials for a thrilling history. 
The battle-ground was sometimes on the south of the 
Great Wall, but generally in the steppes and deserts 
beyond. 

As illustrations of the varying fortunes attending the 
wars of the Hans and the Hsiung Nu, we may mention 
the names of Li Kuang, Li Ling, Sze Ma Ch'ien, and Su 
Wu. The first of these led the armies of his sovereign 



414 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

against the Hsiuilg Nu for many years, in the latter part 
of the second century b. c. He had, it is said, come off 
victorious in seventy battles, when, in a final conflict, 
disappointed in his expectation of capturing the Khan, 
he committed suicide on the field of battle, though, if we 
may believe the record, that battle was also a victory. 
This gives us a glimpse of the style of Hsiung Nu war- 
fare. They were like the Parthians, ** most to be dreaded 
when in flight." That a General, contending with such 
a foe, should destroy himself from chagrin at the results 
of his seventy-first victory, affords us a fair criterion for 
estimating the value of the other seventy. 

Li Ling, the son (or grandson) of the ill-fated Li 
Kuang, appears to have been born under still less 
auspicious stars. Appointed to succeed his father, he 
suffered himself to pursue the flying enemy too hotly, 
when, falling into an ambuscade, his vanguard, consisting 
of a division of five thousand men, was cut to pieces 
before the main body could come to the rescue. Li Ling, 
with a few survivors, surrendered at discretion. His 
life was spared ; but, to take his own description, it was 
little better than a living death. In addition to the priva- 
tions incident to a state of captivity among savage foes, 
he had the bitter reflection that, on account of his sup- 
posed treachery, his nearer relations had all been put to 
death; and that a noble friend, who had guaranteed 
his fidelity, had been subjected to an ignominious 
punishment. 

That noble friend was no other than the great historian, 
Sze Ma Ch'ien. Required by a cruel decree to pay the 
forfeit of Li Ling's alleged treachery, the historian chose 
to submit to a disgraceful mutilation,* rather than lose 
his life; not, as he himself says, that he held life dear 
* He had, however, become a father prior to this disgrace. 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 415 

or feared death, but solely to gain a few years for the 
completion of his life task, a debt which he owed to 
posterity. He lived to place the last stone on his own 
imperishable monument ; and for twenty centuries he has 
had among his countrymen a name *' better than that of 
sons and of daughters." 

Su Wu, the last of the four unfortunates, was a diplo- 
matic envoy. Having, while at the court of the Grand 
Khan, attempted by undiplomatic means to compass the 
destruction of an enemy, he was thrown into prison, and 
detained in captivity for nineteen years. A tender poem 
is extant, which he addressed to his wife on parting, at 
the commencement of his perilous mission. Whether she 
survived to welcome his return, we are not informed ; but, 
in that case, she must have died with grief, to see him 
accompanied by a Tartar wife. 

We cannot pause longer among the romantic episodes 
so thickly scattered through the literature of the Hans. 
We must travel back another thousand years, to arrive at 
the last and the principal division of our subject, — the 
Tartar Tribes in Ancient China. 

We find ourselves at the rise of the third dynasty, the 
famous dynasty of Chou, which occupied the throne for 
over eight hundred years (1122 b. c. to 255 b. c). We 
are at the dawn of letters ; at the dividing line which sepa- 
rates the legendary from the historical period. The Great 
Wall has no existence, but the hostile tribes are there; — 
not Manchu or Mongol, not Hsiung Nu, Hui Ku, or T*u 
Chiieh, but the ancestors of all of them, under different 
names, hovering, like birds of prey, on the unprotected 
frontiers of a rich and tempting country. At this epoch, 
the Chinese people, who had originated somewhere in 
Central Asia, were few in number, and occupied a terri- 
tory of comparatively limited extent. They were dis- 



4i6 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tinguished from their neighbors chiefly by a knowledge of 
letters, and by the possession of a higher civilization. 
This incipient culture gave them an immense advantage 
over the barbarous tribes who surrounded them on every 
side and opposed their progress. These tribes are 
grouped under several comprehensive terms: — those on 
the east are called Yi ; those on the north, Ti ; those on the 
west, Jung or Ch'iang; and those on the south, Man. 
The original sense of these names as expressed in picture 
writing, seems to be as follows: — The Yi were famous 
archers, and were so called from their *' great bows." The 
northerners used dogs in hunting and herding, and de- 
pended on fire to temper the cold of their rigorous 
winters ; " dog " and *' fire " are therefore combined in 
the ideograph by which the Ti are designated. The Jung 
were armed with spears, and this their weapon furnished 
the symbol for their ideograph. The ideograph Ch'iang 
is made up of the head of a goat and the legs of a man, 
and so denotes to the Chinese imagination hideous mon- 
sters, the reverse of the Greek conception of Pan and the 
Satyrs ; it means " goat-men," " goat-herds," or " shep- 
herds," and identifies them essentially with the Ti, or 
dog-using nomads of the north. The character for Man 
combines those for '' worm " and '' silk," and impHes 
that the barbarians of the south, even at that early day, 
were not ignorant of silk-culture. 

These names and characters all became more or less 
expressive of contempt, but were without doubt less 
offensive in their original sense. Marco Polo, who fol- 
lowed the Tartar usage, applies the word Man, in the 
form Manzi (or Mantsi) to the whole of the Chinese 
people. They were so called as being " southrons " with 
respect to the people of Mongolia, and at the same time 
objects of contempt to their conquerors. 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 417 

All the tribes of the south and the east, i. e. the Man 
and the Yi, save certain aborigines called Miao, were con- 
quered and gradually absorbed and assimilated by the 
vigorous race whose progeny peoples modern China 
proper. The Miao have been able to retain their inde- 
pendence to the present day, by taking refuge in the inac- 
cessible fastnesses of mountain chains. 

The barbarous tribes of the north and west, the Ti and 
the Ch'iang, were never permanently subdued. This was 
simply because their lands never invited conquest. Their 
storm-swept pastures offered the Chinese no adequate 
compensation for the toil and danger involved in such an 
undertaking. On the contrary, as we have seen, it was 
the wealth and fertility of China that tempted constantly, 
throughout the eight hundred years of the Chou dynasty, 
the fierce and hungry tribes of the north and west to 
make their predatory incursions. These are the quarters 
from which conquering armies have once and again risen 
up, like the sands of their deserts, to overwhelm parts or 
the whole of the empire. To repel the aggressions of 
these troublesome neighbors was the chief occupation of 
the Chinese armies in the earliest times, as it has con- 
tinued to be down through all the ages. The oldest 
extant Chinese poetry, older than any history, shows us 
the Chinese warrior, like the magic horseman of Granada, 
with the head of his steed and the point of his lance 
directed always towards the north as the source of dan- 
ger. History shows that the princes who were employed 
to hold these enemies in check generally held in their 
hands the destinies of the empire. And in this way 
the northern tribes exercised for centuries, throughout 
the third or Chou dynasty, an indirect but important polit- 
ical influence. 

To give only two examples, both from the most ancient 



4i8 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

period of authentic history: — The house of Chou, the 
most illustrious of the twenty- four dynasties, rose from 
a small warlike principality in the mountains of the north- 
west ; they were made strong by conflict with their savage 
enemies, and their chief was regarded as the bulwark of 
the nation. Hsi Po,* the Lord of the West, or Wen 
Wang, as he is now called, excited by his growing power 
the jealousy of his suzerain, the last emperor of the 
second or Shang dynasty, and was thrown into prison by 
the tyrant, who did not dare, however, to put him to 
death. In the panic caused by a sudden irruption of the 
north men, Wen Wang was set free, and invested with 
even greater power than he had ever possessed before. 
To the day of his death, he remained loyal ; but his son, 
Chou Fa, or Wu Wang, employed his trained forces, like 
a double-edged sword, not only to protect the frontier 
and drive back the invaders, but to overturn the throne 
of his master, the last emperor of the Shang. 

After the lapse of over eight hundred years, the house 
of Chou was replaced by the house of Ch'in which had 
been cradled among the same mountains and made strong 
by conflict with the same enemies. During the Chou 
period (1122 b. c. to 255 b. c), the barbarians never 
ceased to be a factor in the poHtics of the empire; not 
merely making forays and retiring with their booty, but 
driving the Chinese before them, occupying their lands, 
and planting themselves in the shape of independent 
or feudal States, as the Goths and Vandals did within the 
bounds of the Roman empire. The analogy does not 
stop here. Like the Roman empire, China had, in the 
early part of the Chou period, two capitals, one in the 
west near Hsi An Fu (about one hundred miles south- 

* Mencius says that T'ai Wang, the grandfather of Hsi Po, 
paid tribute to the Tartars. 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 419 

■ west of the great bend of the Huang Ho), in Shensi ; and 
another in the east, near the present K'ai Feng Fu, in 
Honan. The former was sacked by the Tartars in 781 
B. c, just as Rome was by the Goths in 410 a. d. 

The story, as given by Chinese writers, is as follows : — 
The emperor Yu Wang had a young consort on whom he 
doted. One day it came into his head to give a false 
alarm to the armies surrounding the capital, merely to 
aiford her an amusing spectacle. Beacon fires, the signal 
of imminent danger, were lighted on all the hills. The 
nobles came rushing to the rescue, each at the head of 
his retainers. Finding there was no real danger, they 
dispersed in a state of high indignation. The young 
empress had her laugh ; but they laugh best who laugh 
last, as the proverb has it. Not long after this, the 
Tartars made a sudden attack. The beacon fires were 
again lighted, but the nobles, having once been deceived, 
took care not to respond to the call, lest they should again 
be making a woman's holiday. The city was taken, and 
the silly sovereign and his fair enchantress both perished 
in the flames. However much of the legendary there may 
be in this narrative, the one stern fact that lies at the bot- 
tom of it is the presence of a ferocious enemy whom we 
call by the general name of Tartars. 

After this calamity, the heir to the throne removed 
his court to the eastern capital, leaving the tombs of 
his fathers in the hands of the barbarians. In the heart 
of the central plain, and surrounded by a cordon of 
feudal States, the imperial throne was thought to be 
secure. But the irrepressible foe vvas forcing his way to 
the south and east, with a slow but resistless motion. A 
hundred and thirty years later (about 650 b. c), we have 
the spectacle of a barbarian horde in actual possession of 
the eastern capital, and the emperor a refugee, pleading 



420 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

for re-instatement at the hands of his vassals. As might 
be expected, the blame of the catastrophe is again charged 
on a woman. That woman was a barbarian, and the fact 
throws a strong light on the position of the contending 
parties. 

Her tribe had established itself in the rich alluvial 
region on the southern bend of the Yellow river. As 
enemies, they were a standing menace to the capital; as 
friends, they might serve for its janizaries. In order to 
win their favor and secure their fidelity, the emperor 
took one of their princesses into his harem. Captivated 
by her charms, he subsequently raised her to be the part- 
ner of his throne. An ambitious kinsman, desirous of sup- 
planting the emperor on the throne, began by supplanting 
him in the affections of his barbarian wife. Her infi- 
delity being discovered, she was sent back to her kindred, 
where she was joined by her paramour, who stirred up 
the powerful clan to avenge an insult done to them in 
her person. The emperor was easily put to flight; but, 
wanting the support of the nobles, the usurper's tenure 
of the capital was of short duration. 

Subsequently the barbarians menaced the capital fre- 
quently, if not constantly; and the Son of Heaven was 
more than once compelled to appeal to his vassals for 
succor. On one occasion, his envoys even turned against 
him, and went over to the enemy, apparently deeming it 
better to serve a growing than a decaying power. About 
forty years earlier than the flight of the emperor above 
mentioned, another barbarian beauty, named Li Chi, 
played a conspicuous and mischievous role at the court of 
Ch'in Wen, the greatest chief of the vassal States. Taken 
in battle, she captivated her princely captor, and main- 
tained by her talents the ascendancy which she at first 
owed to her personal attractions. She induced the prince 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 421 

to change the order of succession in favor of her off- 
spring, sowing the seeds of a family feud that brought 
the princely house to the verge of destruction. 

Of these immigrant Tartar tribes, no fewer than five 
or six are mentioned in the Confucian Annals as having 
succeeded in establishing themselves in the interior of 
China. Two of them (called Red and White, — probably, 
like the Neri and Bianchi of Florence, from the color of 
their clothing, or of their banners) were settled within the 
bounds of the present province of Shansi ; one in Honan ; 
one in Chihli ; and two in Shantung. How they effected 
a settlement is not difficult to understand. In an age 
of anarchy, when rival States were contending for the 
hegemony, the great barons found it to their interest to 
secure the aid of troops of hardy horsemen from the 
northern plains, rewarding their service by grants of 
land. The emperor sought in the same way to strengthen 
himself against his unruly vassals. And so, at last, by too 
great dependence on foreign auxiliaries, the empire be- 
came unable to shake off its helpers. 

How deeply seated was the antagonism between them 
and the Chinese may be inferred from one or two ex- 
amples. The emperor being about to despatch a body 
of those hired auxiliaries to chastise a disobedient subject, 
one of his ministers warned him against a measure which 
would be sure to alienate his friends, and strengthen the 
hands of the common enemy. " If," said the minister, 
" the prince finds his moral influence insufficient to se- 
cure order, his next resort is to make the most of the 
ties of blood. But let him beware of throwing himself 
into the arms of a foreign invader." This counsel re- 
minds us of the remonstrance of Lord Chatham against 
the employment of savages, in tlie conflict with the Ameri- 
can colonies. We may add that India and China both 



422 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

came under the sway of their present rulers througH 
the mistaken poHcy of depending on foreign auxiliaries. 

With the Chinese, it was a practical maxim that no 
faith was to be kept with those invaders ; and a terrible 
vengeance was sometimes taken for the insults and perfidy 
to which they were subjected. 

Another fact may be cited, which shows at once the 
power of the barbarians and the horror in which they 
were held. In the sixth century b. c, the rising civiliza- 
tion of China was on the point of being overwhelmed by 
them, when a deliverer was raised up in the person of 
Duke Huan, of Ch'i, who turned the tide at the critical 
moment, as Theodoric did the onslaught of the Huns 
under Attila. How imminent was the peril of the em- 
pire, and how eminent the merit of the victor, is apparent 
from a reply of Confucius to some one who supposed that 
he had spoken disparagingly of Duke Huan. ** How could 
I disparage Duke Huan ? " he exclaimed ; *' but for him 
we should all have been buttoning our coats on the left 
side," i. e., we should have been subject to the Tartars. 

Thus far, we have occupied ourselves with what "we 
may call an outline of the political relations of the Chi- 
nese with the northern tribes in war and in peace. The 
ethnography of those tribes now claims our attention, 
if only to show the impossibility of arriving at any satis- 
factory conclusion. The doubts expressed by the best 
authorities as to the ethnological relations of the Hsiung 
Nu have already been referred to. Conspicuous as they 
are in history for many centuries about the commencement 
of the Christian era, it has been much disputed whether 
they were Turks, Mongols, or Huns. How much greater 
is the difficulty of identification as we travel back to a 
period where the torch of history sheds but a feeble 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 423 

ray, or disappears in the vague obscurity of legendary 
tradition. 

In those remote ages, the guiding clue of philology fails 
us. While a few names that appear in the less ancient 
literature, such as Hui Ku and T'u Chiieh,* suggest the 
identity of the tribes that bore them with the Ouigours 
and Turks, there is absolutely nothing to be made out 
of the names that meet us most frequently in the earlier 
records. The vague terms Jung and Ti, under which 
were grouped peoples as diverse as the tribes of North 
American Indians, are always accompanied by some mark 
of contempt ; the character for dog is prefixed to one, and 
incorporated with the other. Hsien Yuan, another name 
of frequent occurrence, has the dog radical in both its 
parts, and appears intended to confound the people who 
bore it with a tribe of dog-like apes. It could hardly be 
expected that writers, who deny their neighbors the 
attributes of humanity, would take an interest in depicting 
their manners or studying their language. Accordingly, 
we search in vain in the earlier Chinese literature for 
any such precious fragments of those northern tongues as 
Plautus, in one of his plays, has preserved of the Cartha- 
ginian. They themselves possessed no written speech; 
and, had they possessed it, they have left us no such im- 
perishable monuments or relics of handicraft as, at this 
day, are throwing fresh light on the origin of the 
Etruscans. 

A vast amount of undigested information is to be found 
in the pages of Ma Tuan Lin, relating to the border 

* Hsiung Nu, Tu Chueh, Hui Ku, Hsien Yuan, HsQn Yu, Pei 
Hu, Ta Ta (= Tartar) Hsien Pi, Su Sh^n. These are only 
some of the names that are given in a way more or less vague 
to the nomads o£ the North and West. 



424 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

tribes of the middle ages. But outside the circle of the 
classics, the only descriptive geography that has reached 
us from the Chou period is the Shati Hai Ching, a kind 
of Chinese Gulliver, which peoples the world with mon- 
sters of every form and fashion. The older writers, in 
confounding numerous tribes under one or a few terms, 
were no doubt influenced by the fact that to them they 
all appeared under one aspect, — that of wandering hunt- 
ers or shepherds, equally rude and equally ferocious. 

No one who gives attention to such subjects can fail 
to be struck with a twofold process that takes place in 
the life of all nations, and most of all in that of nomadic 
tribes. The first is what we may call the stage of dif- 
ferentiation, through which they pass, when, small and 
weak, they keep themselves isolated from their neigh- 
bors : Even their languages diverge in a short time to 
such a degree as to be mutually unintelligible. The 
second is the stage of assimilation, when, brought into 
the collisions of war or the intercourse of trade, each 
gives and receives impressions that make them approxi- 
mate to a common type. Thus the barbarians on the 
north of China present in the earlier ages a vague variety, 
which tends, with the lapse of time, to give place to uni- 
formity of manners, and even of physical features. 

Rolling over the plains, as the waves over the sea, 
their blood has been commingled; and, though their 
names have often changed, their physical type has prob- 
ably remained unaltered. It is natural to raise the ques- 
tion, — What was that physical type? It has not been 
handed down either in painting or sculpture, and yet I 
think it is possible for us to recover it. It stands before 
us to-day, stamped on their descendants of the hun- 
dredth generation. As the Manchu and Mongol are to- 
day, such were the Jung and the Ti, co-eval with Assyria 



THE TARTARS IN ANCIENT CHINA 425 

and Babylon. The beautiful Aleuta, the hapless consort 
of the late emperor, was a Mongol. Her grandfather, 
the Grand Secretary Sai Shang A, having failed to sup- 
press the Tai-ping Rebellion, was thrown into prison 
and condemned to death. His son, Ch'ung Ch'i, begged 
to share his fate, and tenderly served him in his con- 
finement, — an act of filial piety which was subsequently 
rewarded by his elevation to the dignity of Chuang Yuan, 
or Scholar Laureate of the Empire. So eminent is this 
grade that his daughter was deemed a fit consort for the 
late Emperor T'ung Chih. For two short years she en- 
joyed her brilliant position, when, the Emperor dying, 
she refused food and followed him into the world of 
spirits. 

More than two thousand years ago, other princes were 
captivated by the beauty of the daughters of the desert. 
The barbarians of those times were probably not inferior 
to the Chinese in form, feature, or natural intelligence, 
as their descendants are not inferior in any of these 
respects. Indeed Chinese, Manchus, and Mongols, as we 
see them in the city of Peking, are not distinguishable 
except by some peculiarity of costume. 

Were they originally of one mould, or have the lines 
of distinction become gradually effaced by the intercourse 
of ages? The latter is, we think, the correct hypo'thesis. 
The primitive Chinese type, that imported by the immi- 
grants who founded the civilization of China, is, we be- 
lieve, no longer to be discerned. In the southern and 
central region, it has everywhere been modified by com- 
bination with the aboriginal inhabitants, leading to pro- 
vincial characteristics, which the practiced eye can easily 
recognize. It has undergone, we think, a similar modifi- 
cation in the northern belt. It met here with tribes akin to 
those of Mongolia, and gradually absorbed them, and 



426 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

to this combination are probably due the height and 
the stalwart physique of the Northern Chinese. 

This process was going on in pre-historic times. 
History, at its earliest dawn, shows us unassimilated frag- 
ments of those tribes existing among the Northern Chi- 
nese. It also discloses a vast southward movement of the 
outside barbarians, checked for a time by the Great Wall, 
only to be renewed on a more stupendous scale. We have 
seen how small bodies infiltrated through every channel ; 
we have also seen how, organized into great States, they 
established in China a dominion enduring for centuries. 
We are inclined to believe that they have stamped their 
impress on the people of North China as thoroughly 
as the Saxons have theirs on the people of England, or the 
Vandals theirs on that part of Spain which still bears 
their name in the form of Andalusia. 

The former have made the language of the English 
essentially Germanic ; and the language of northern China 
has been profoundly modified by Tartar influence. Hence 
we are told by Dr. Edkins that the ancient Chinese pro- 
nunciation is only to be found in the Southern provinces, 
where in fact we should look for it, in the region least 
affected by the tide of invasion. 

If you inquire for the influences to which the invaders 
have in their turn been subjected, we answer that, in all 
ages, they have exchanged barbarism for such civilization 
as they found among the more cultivated race. 



XXII 

INTERNATIONAL LAW IN ANCIENT CHINA 

THE treaties, by which China has been brought into 
closer relations with the nations of the West, and 
especially the establishment of intercourse by 
means of permanent embassies, have led Chinese states- 
men to turn their attention to the subject of International 
Law.* 

For them, it is a new study, involving conceptions 
which it would hardly have been possible for their pred- 
ecessors to form at any time in the course of the last 
two thousand years ; though, as we shall endeavor to 
show, they possessed something answering to it in their 
earlier history. 

Their modern history commences two centuries before 
the Christian era ; and, for our purpose, it may be divided 
into three periods. The first, extending from the epoch 
of the Punic wars down to the discovery of the route to 
the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope; the second, com- 
prehending three centuries and a half of restricted com- 
mercial intercourse; the third, commencing with the so- 
called *' opium war," in 1839, ^^^ covering the sixty years 
of treaty relations. 

During the first, the Chinese were as little affected 
by the convulsions that shook the western world as if 

* The works of Wheaton, Woolsey, Bluntschli, and others, on 
this subject, have been translated for their use by the author 
of this book. 

427 



428 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

they had belonged to another planet. During the second, 
they became aware of the existence of the principal States 
of modern Europe; but the light that reached them was 
not yet sufficient to reveal the magnitude and importance 
of those far-off powers. Within the last period the open- 
ing of the Suez Canal and the construction of the Trans- 
Siberian Railway have brought them into what they 
regard as a dangerous proximity to formidable neighbors. 
And the rude experiences of five wars, each increasing in 
intensity until China was pitted against the world, have 
made them acquainted with the military strength of Euro- 
pean nations. 

Such are the steps by which China has been led to 
accept intercourse on a footing of equality with nations 
which, for three centuries, she had been accustomed to 
class with her own tributaries. 

Her tributaries included all the petty States of Eastern 
Asia. Attracted partly by community of letters and 
religion, and partly by commercial interest, but more, 
perhaps, by the moral effect of her national greatness, 
they rendered a voluntary homage to the master of a 
realm so vast that, like Rome of old, it has always called 
itself by a title equivalent to orhis terrarum. These vassal 
States had few relations with each other, and it was not 
to be expected that China, acknowledging nothing like 
reciprocity in her intercourse with them, should learn 
from them the idea of a community of nations possessed 
of equal rights. 

For twenty centuries she had presented to her own 
people, as well as to her dependent neighbors, the im- 
posing spectacle of an empire unrivaled in extent, whose 
unity had been broken only by rare intervals of revolution 
or anarchy. During this long period, it was no more 
possible that an international code should spring up in 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 429 

China than it would have been for such a thing to appear 
in Europe, had the Roman empire remained undivided 
until the present day. The requisite conditions were 
wanting. Where they exist, a code based upon usage, 
and more or less developed, comes into being by the 
necessities of the human mind. 
These conditions are: 

ist.— The existence of a group of independent States so situ- 
ated as to require or favour the maintenance of 
friendly intercourse; 

2nd.— That those States should be so related as to conduct 
their intercourse on a basis of equality. 

If these conditions were conspicuously absent under 
the consolidated empire, they were no less obviously 
present in the preceding period, accompanied by every 
circumstance that could favor the development of an 
international code. 

The vast domain of China proper was at that epoch 
divided between a number of independent principalities, 
whose people were of one blood, possessors of a common 
civilization already much advanced, and united by the 
additional bond of a common language. 

These conditions concurred in ancient Greece, and the 
result was a rudimentary code, culminating in the Am- 
phictyonic Council, — a provision for settling international 
disputes, which suggests comparison with the " concert " 
of European powers. 

In ancient China, the conditions are similar, but the 
scale of operation is vastly more extended. There is, 
moreover, another important difference. The Chinese 
States were not, like those of Greece, a cluster of de- 
tached tribes who had together emerged from barbarism, 
without any well-defined political connection; they were 



430 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the fragments of a disintegrated empire, inheriting its 
laws and civiHzation, as the States of modern Europe 
inherited those of Rome. 

The period during which they rose and fell was the 
latter half of the dynasty of Chou, pretty nearly cor- 
responding to that extending from the birth of Solon to 
the close of the first century after the death of Alexander, 
which in China, as in Greece, was an age of intense 
political activity. The normal form of government for 
the empire was the feudal, the archetype of that which 
prevailed in Japan until it was swept away by the revo- 
lution of 1868. The several States were created by the 
voluntary subdivision of the national domain by the 
founder of the dynasty, who, like Charlemagne, by this 
arrangement planted within it the seeds of its destruction. 

The throne of each State being hereditary, a feeling 
of independence soon began to spring up. The emperors 
were at first able to preserve order by force; and, even 
when shorn of their power, their court, like that of the 
Holy See in the Middle Ages, continued for a long time to 
serve as a court of appeal for the adjustment of interna- 
tional difficulties. At length, losing all respect for au- 
thority, the feudal princes threw oflF the semblance of 
subjection, and pursued without restraint the objects of 
their private ambition. This age is called by the native 
historians chan kuo, or that of the " warring States ; " 
and that which preceded it, characterized by orderly and 
pacific intercourse, is described as lieh kuo, or the family 
of " co-ordinated States." 

A family of States, with such an arena and such 
antecedents, could hardly fail to develop, in the inter- 
course of peace and war, a system of usages which might 
be regarded as constituting for them a body of 
international laws. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 431 

Accordingly, if we turn to the history of the period, 
in quest of such an indigenous system, we shall find, if 
not the system itself, at least the evidence of its existence. 
We find, as we have said, a family of States, many of 
them as extensive as the great States of western Europe, 
united by the ties of race, literature, and religion, carrying 
on an active intercourse, commercial and political, which, 
without some recognized Jus gentium, would have been 
impracticable. We find the interchange of embassies, 
with forms of courtesy, indicative of an elaborate civiliza- 
tion. We find treaties solemnly drawn up and deposited 
for safe keeping in a sacred place called Meng Fu. We 
find a balance of power studied and practised, leading to 
combinations to check the aggressions of the strong and 
to protect the rights of the weak. We find the rights of 
neutrals to a certain extent recognized and respected. 
Finally, we find a class of men devoted to diplomacy as a 
profession,* though, to say the truth, their diplomacy was 
not unlike that which was practised by the States of 
Italy in the days of Machiavelli. 

No formal text-book, containing the rules which for 
so many centuries controlled this complicated intercourse, 
has come down to our times. If such writings ever 
existed, they probably perished in the " conflagration of 
the books," which sheds such a lurid light on the memory 
of the builder of the Great Wall. The membra disjecta 
of such an international code as we have supposed are, 
however, to be found profusely scattered over the litera- 
ture of those times, — in the writings of Confucius and 
Mencius ; in those of other philosophers of the last five 
centuries b. c. ; in various historical records ; and par- 
ticularly in the Choii Li, or Rites of the Chou dynasty. 

The day may perhaps come when some Chinese Grotius 
* See next chapter. 



432 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

will gather up these desultory hints as carefully as the 
illustrious Hollander did the traces of international usages 
in Greece and Italy. To make even a partial collection of 
the passages in Chinese writers relating to this subject, 
would neither come within the scope nor the compass 
of the present chapter. All that I propose to myself, in 
addition to indicating, as I have done, the existence be- 
tween the States of ancient China of a peculiar system of 
consuetudinary law, is to make a few citations confirma- 
tory of the views expressed, and throwing light on some 
of the more interesting of the topics to which I have 
adverted. 

The clearest view of tlie public law which was ac- 
knowledged by this group of States, after they became in- 
dependent, is undoubtedly to be sought for in their rela- 
tions to each other while subject to a common suzerain. 

The greater States were twelve in number, and for ages 
that distribution of territory was regarded as no less 
permanent than the order of the heavenly bodies. It was 
consecrated by the science of astronomy as it then existed, 
and an ancient map of the heavens gives us a duodecimal 
division, with the stars of each portion formally set apart 
to preside over the destinies of a corresponding portion of 
the empire. 

The names of the twelve great States may also be seen 
inscribed on the horizon of an azimuth instrument, made 
under the Mongol dynasty, circa 1320, and still preserved 
in the Observatory of Peking. What can better illustrate 
the depth of the sentiment connected with this territorial 
division than the fact that such a souvenir, associating 
it with the unchanging heavens, should be reproduced in 
the construction of an astronomical instrument fifteen 
centuries after the last of those States had ceased to 
exist ! 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 433 

Confucius appears to allude to this in a beautiful 
passage in which he compares the emperor, or the wise 
man — for the words have a double sense — to the polar 
star, which sits unmoved on its central throne, while all 
the constellations revolve around it. Could anything be 
devised more effectual than this alliance of geography and 
astrology, to place the territorial rights of the several 
States under the safeguard of religion ? More picturesque 
than the Roman method of placing the boundaries under 
the care of a special divinity, it was probably more effi- 
cacious, and contributed in no small degree to maintain 
the equilibrium of a naturally unstable system, during a 
period which, in the West witnessed the rise and fall of 
the Babylonian, Persian, and Greek empires, entailing the 
complete obliteration of most of their minor divisions. 

These twelve States had a great number of lesser prin- 
cipalities dependent on them, the whole constituting a 
political organization as multifarious and complex as 
that which existed in Germany under the sway of the 
" Holy Roman Empire." As in mediseval Europe, the 
chiefs of these States were ranked with respect to nobility 
in five orders, answering to duke, marquis, earl, viscount, 
and baron, the inferior depending on the superior, but all 
paying homage to the Son of Heaven, a title which was, 
even at that early period, applied to the Emperor, who 
had a right, for the common good, to command the serv- 
ice of all. In the annals of Lu, we find the following 
curious entry: 

" In the ninth year of his reign, the Duke met in 
conference at Kuei Chiu the Duke of Chou, the Marquis 
of Chi, the Viscount of Sung, the Marquis of Wei, the 
Earl of Cheng, the Baron of Hsii, and the Earl of Tsao." 

We note here the presence of all the five orders. The 
commentary of Tso, we may add, states the object of 



434 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the meeting as '' the formation of a league and the pro- 
motion of friendly relations in accordance with authorized 
usage." 

The authorized usages here referred to constituted the 
basis of the international law of the time. They were con- 
tained in part in the Chou Li, or Rites of the Chou dynasty, 
published by imperial authority about iioo b. c.^ and, in a 
somewhat mutilated form, extant at the present day. This 
Code defines the orders of nobility; prescribes a sump- 
tuary law for each, extending even to their rites of sepul- 
ture; regulates the part of each in the pubHc sacrifices; 
and lays down a form of etiquette to be observed in all 
their public meetings. It gives in detail the hierarchy 
of officers, civil and military ; indicates their functions ; 
fixes the weights and measures, the mode of collecting 
the revenue, and the modes of punishment ; and all this 
mixed up with an infinitude of ceremonial detail which to 
us appears the reverse of business-like, but which was 
no doubt as well adapted to the character of the ancient 
Chinese as was the ritualistic legislation of Moses to that 
of the Hebrews. 

Primarily obligatory on the immediate subjects of the 
imperial house, this Code was, secondarily, binding on 
all the vassals of the empire, by all of whom it was 
adopted in the minutest particulars, with the single ex- 
ception of the State of Ch'in, in the extreme northwest, a 
State which obstinately adhered to the ritual and etiquette 
of the earlier dynasty of Shang, and, cherishing a spirit 
of alienation, became the secret foe and ultimately the 
destroyer of the imperial house. 

With this exception, the laws and usages of the sev- 
eral States were so uniform — all being copied from a 
common model — that there was little occasion for the cul- 
tivation of that branch of international jurisprudence. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 435 

which in modern times has become so prominent under 
the title of the " conflict of laws." . 

Ideas derived from the feudal system were so inter- 
woven with every part of this complicated legislation that 
its general acceptance formed the mainstay of the im- 
perial throne. The great princes styled themselves 
vassals, though as independent as some of China's mod- 
ern vassals, and, like these latter, paying formal homage 
only once in five or ten years.* They accordingly looked 
up to the emperor as the fountain of honor, and the 
supreme authority in all questions of ceremony, if not in 
questions of right. 

Of this moral ascendency, for which we can find no 
parallel better than the veneration which, in the Middle 
Ages nearly all Christian sovereigns were wont to show 
to the Holy See, we have a remarkable example in the 
Kiio Yu. The emperor, Hsiang Wang, 651 b. c, being 
driven by a domestic revolt from his territories — a small 
district in the center of the empire, which may be com- 
pared with the Pontifical States recently absorbed by the 
kingdom of Italy — was restored to his throne by the pow- 
erful intervention of the Duke of Ch'in. In recompense 
for such a signal service, the emperor offered him a slice 
of land. The duke declined it,t and asked, instead, that 
he might be permitted to construct his tomb after the 
model of the imperial mausoleum. The emperor, viewing 
this apparently modest request as a dangerous assump- 
tion, promptly refused it, and the duke was compelled to 
abide by the recognized Code of Rites. 

The possession of this common Code, originating in 

* A decennial tribute mission from Burmah is solemnly prom- 
ised in a treaty with Great Britain. 

t According to some of the histories, he finally accepted it, 
when balked in his loftier aspirations. 



43^ THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the will of a common suzerain, contributed to maintain 
for nearly a thousand years among the States of China, 
discordant and belligerent as they often were, a bond of 
sympathy in strong contrast with the feelings they mani- 
fested toward all nations not comprehended within the 
pale of their own civilization. When, for instance, the 
Tartars of the north-west presented themselves at the 
court of Ch'in, requesting a treaty of peace and 
amity, and humbly offered to submit to be treated as 
vassals of the more enlightened power, — '* Amity," ex- 
claimed the prince, '* what do they know of amity ? The 
barbarous savages ! Give them war as the portion due to 
our natural enemies." Nor was it until his minister 
had produced five solid reasons for a pacific policy that 
the haughty prince consented to accept them as vassals. 

In the history of those times, the curtain rises on a 
scene of peaceful intercourse which, in many ways, im- 
plies a basis of public law. Merchants are held in esteem, 
one of the most distinguished of the disciples of Con- 
fucius belonging to that class ; and a rivalry subsists be- 
tween the several princes in attracting them to their 
States. Their wares are subjected to tolls and customs; 
but the object is revenue, not protection. 

The commerce of mind reveals relations of a still more 
intimate character. The schools of one State are often 
largely frequented by students from another; and those 
who make the greatest proficiency are readily taken into 
the service of foreign princes. Philosophers and political 
reformers travel from court to court, in quest of patron- 
age. Confucius himself wanders over half the empire, 
and draws disciples from all the leading principalities. 

A century later, Mencius, with the spirit of a Hebrew 
prophet, proclaims in more than one capital his great 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 437 

message that " the only foundation of national prosperity 
is justice and charity." 

It was to this kind of intercourse that Ch'in, the rising 
power of the North-west, was indebted for the ascend- 
ency which it slowly acquired in the affairs of the empire, 
and which eventually placed its princes in possession of 
the imperial throne, its rulers having adopted the policy 
of seeking the best talent of neighboring States for viziers 
and generals. 

The personal intercourse of sovereign princes forms a 
striking feature in the history- of those times. Their 
frequent interchange of visits indicates a degree of mu- 
tual confidence which speaks volumes for the public senti- 
ment. Confidence was, indeed, sometimes abused, as it 
has been in other countries; but such intercourse was al- 
ways characterized by courtesy, and mostly by good faith. 

On one occasion, when a powerful prince came with a 
great retinue to visit the Duke of Lu, Confucius, who 
was Minister of Foreign Affairs, adopted such precau- 
tions, and conducted the interviews with such adroitness, 
that he not only averted what was believed to be a danger, 
but induced the foreign prince to restore a territory which 
he had unjustly appropriated. 

A visit of the Duke of Ch'in to the Duke of Lu may 
be mentioned, as illustrating the freedom and familiarity 
which sometimes marked this princely intercourse. The 
host accompanied his guest as far as the Yellow River. 
The latter, learning during a parting entertainment that 
the former had not yet received the Kuan li * — a rite an- 

* Kuan li — literally the " cap ceremony " — the formal assump- 
tion by a youth of a kind of cap distinctive of mature age. 
Now completely disused, this was formerly one of the " four 
great rites," and the references to it in the ancient books remind 



438 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

swering In the case of nobles somewhat to the conferring 
of knighthood — offered, then and there, to confer it. It 
was objected that the means were wanting for perform- 
ing the ceremony with due solemnity; and the capital 
of Wei being nearer than his own, the Duke of Lu pro- 
posed to proceed thither for the purpose. They did so, 
and the rite was celebrated with suitable pomp in a temple 
borrowed for the occasion. 

^General meetings of the princes for the purpose of 
forming or renewing treaties of alliance were of frequent 
occurrence. Embracing what were then regarded as 
all the leading powers of the earth, these meetings present 
a distant, but not faint, parallel to the great congresses 
of European sovereigns. 

The more usual form of friendly intercourse between 
the States of China was, as elsewhere, by means of 
envoys. 

The person of an envoy was sacred ; but instances are 
not wanting of their arrest and execution. In the latter 
case, they were regarded as spies, and the punishment 
inflicted on them was considered as a declaration or act 
of war. In the former, the violence was sometimes de- 
fended on the ground that the envoy had undertaken to 
pass through the territory into a neighboring State with- 
out having first obtained a passport, his visit being at 
the same time held to have a hostile object. Ordinarily, 
an envoy was treated with scrupulous courtesy, the cere- 
monial varying according to his own rank, or that of his 
sovereign. Questions of precedence, which often arose, 
were decided according to settled principles ; but the rules 

us of the pomp with which the toga virilis was assumed by 
patrician youth at Rome. Still, as between nobles, I can think 
of no better analogy than that given in the text. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 439 

were by no means as clear and simple as those enacted by 
the Congress of Vienna. 

A dispute of this kind arising between the envoys of 
two duchies at the court of Lu, one claimed precedence on 
the ground that his State was more ancient than the 
other. The minister of the latter replied that his sover- 
eign was more nearly related to the imperial family. The 
difficulty was happily terminated without bloodshed, 
which was not always the case with such quarrels in 
Europe prior to 1815. The master of ceremonies re- 
minded the litigants that the placing of guests belongs to 
the host, and gave preference to the kinsman of the 
emperor. 

Insults to envoys were not unfrequently avenged by 
an appeal to arms. Of this, a notable instance was an 
insult given by the Prince of Chi, at one and the same 
time, to the representatives of four powers. 

These envoys arriving simultaneously, it was observed 
by some wag (the court fool, perhaps) that each was 
marked by a blemish or deformity in his personal ap- 
pearance. One was blind of an eye ; a second was bald ; 
another was lame ; and the last was a dwarf. It was sug- 
gested to the duke that a little innocent amusement might 
be made out of this strange coincidence. The prince, 
acting on the hint, appointed as attendant or introducteur 
to each ambassador an officer who suffered from the 
same defect. The court ladies, who, concealed by cur- 
tains of thin gauze, witnessed the ceremony of introduc- 
tion and the subsequent banquet, laughed aloud when 
they saw the blind leading the blind, and the dwarfs, the 
bald, and the lame, walking in pairs. The envoys, hear- 
ing the merriment, became aware that they had been made 
involuntary actors in a comedy. They retired, vowing 



440 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

vengeance, and the next year saw the capital of Chi be- 
leaguered by the combined forces of the four powers, 
which were only induced to withdraw by the most hu- 
miliating concessions on the part of the young prince, 
who, too late, repented his indecent levity.* 

In the history of Tso, we find a rule for the sending of 
envoys, which has its parallel in the diplomatic usage of 
modern nations. Speaking of a mission to a neighboring 
State, he adds : " This was in accordance with usage. In 
all cases where a new prince comes to the throne, envoys 
are sent to the neighboring States to confirm and extend 
the friendly relations maintained by his predecessor." 

The highest function of an envoy was the negotiation of 
a treaty. Treaties of all kinds known to modern diplo- 
macy were in use in ancient China. Signed with solemn 
formalities, and confirmed by an oath, — the parties ming- 
ling their blood in a cup of wine, or laying their hands 
on the head of an ox to be offered in sacrifice, — such 
documents were carefully treasured up in a sacred place 
called Mcng Fu, the ** Palace of Treaties." 

We are able to give, by way of specimen, the outlines 
of a treaty between the Prince of Cheng and a coalition of 
princes who invaded his territories in 544 b. c. 

PREAMBLE : — The parties to the present Treaty agree to the 
following Articles : 

Article I. — The exportation of corn shall not be prohibited. 
Article II. — One party shall not monopolize trade to the dis- 
advantage of others. 

* This story is derived from a comparison of the three lead- 
ing historians of the period, who differ only in unimportant de- 
tails. In an amplified form, it is to be seen on the boards of 
Chinese theaters at the present day. The Chinese theater, like 
that of Greece, is, for an illiterate public, the chief teacher of 
ancient history. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 441 

Article III. — No one shall give protection to conspiracies 

directed against the others. 
Article IV. — Fugitives from justice shall be surrendered. 
Article V. — Mutual succor shall be given in case of famine. 
Article VI. — Mutual aid shall be given in case of insurrection. 
Article VII. — The contracting powers shall have the same 

friends and the same enemies. 
Article VIII. — We all engage to support the Imperial House. 

RATIFICATION OATH.— We engage to maintain inviolate 
the terms of the foregoing Agreement. May the gods of the hills 
and rivers, the spirits of former emperors and dukes, and the an- 
cestors of our seven tribes and twelve states, watch over its fulfil- 
ment. If any one prove unfaithful, may the all-seeing gods smite 
him, so that his people shall forsake him, his life be lost, and his 
posterity be cut off. 



The outline of a similar convention is given by 
Mencius. On that occasion, the great barons were called 
together by Hsiao Po, Prince of Ch'i, for the purpose of 
effecting needful reforms in 651 b. c. Being a century 
earlier than the other, it is instructive to compare the 
two documents. While in that of later date the Imperial 
authority is so far gone that the barons engage to uphold 
the Imperial House, in the earlier compact the authority 
of the Suzerain is fully recognized, — each article of the 
convention being styled an '' Ordinance " of the 
Emperor. 

That his hold on his vassals was already much weak- 
ened is, however, evident from the provisions that they 
are not to exercise certain powers of sovereignty in the 
way of rewards and punishments, without at least formal 
reference to the " Son of Heaven." 

The stipulations are partly in favor of good morals, 
and partly to facilitate intercourse, and to raise the char- 
acter of the official hierarchy. 



442 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

Article I. — To punish the unfilial ; not to change the succes- 
sion to the throne (of any state) ; and not to 
raise a concubine to be a wife. 

Article II. — To respect the virtues and cherish talent. 

Article III. — To honor the aged and to be kind to the young, 
and not to neglect strangers. 

Article IV. — Officers not to be hereditary ; proxies not to be 
permitted. Suitable men to be sought and found. 
Death not to be inflicted on nobles without refer- 
ence to the Emperor. 

Article V. — Not to divert water-courses, nor obstruct the 
transport of grain. Not to grant land in fief 
without reference to the Emperor. 
CONCLUSION. — All we who are parties to this Covenant 

agree to be at peace with each other. 

" These five rules," adds the philosopher, '' are openly 
violated by the nobles of our day." 

In addition to the rites of religion by which such en- 
gagements were ratified, they were usually secured by 
sanctions of a less sentimental character. As in the 
West, hostages or other material guarantees were given 
in pledge ; sometimes also they were guaranteed by third 
parties, who, directly or indirectly interested, engaged to 
punish a breach of faith. We have, for instance, one 
prince, demanding the mother of another as a hostage. 
The case is instructive in more than one of its aspects. 
The Prince of Ch'in, calling on the Prince of Chi to 
recognize him as his chief, and to surrender his mother 
as a pledge of submission, the latter replies that his 
State was created the peer of the other by the will of the 
former emperors, and that one who would despise the 
patent of an emperor was not fit to be the head of a 
League. As to the demand for his mother as a hostage, 
that was a proposition so monstrous that, rather than 
submit to it, he would meet the enemy under the walls 
of his last fortress. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 443 

At this point, the affair takes a turn which serves to 
illustrate a procedure of frequent occurrence in the 
history of those times. The princes of two neighboring 
States come forward as mediators, and bring about an 
accommodation on less oppressive conditions. 

The more enlightened writers of Chinese antiquity 
condemn the practice of exchanging hostages, as tending 
to keep up a state of quasi hostility and mutual mistrust. 
No writers of any nation have been more emphatic in 
insisting on good faith as a cardinal virtue in all interna- 
tional transactions. Says Confucius : — " A man without 
faith is like a wagon without a coupling-pole to connect 
the wheels." Speaking of a State, he says : — " Of the 
three essentials, the greatest is good faith. Without a 
revenue and without an army, a State may still exist ; but 
it cannot exist without good faith." 

It remains to speak of the intercourse of war. '" Inter 
hostes scripta jura non valere at valere non scripta " — 
is a principle that was as well understood in ancient 
China as among the ancient nations of the Western 
world; and war in China was, to say the least, not more 
brutal than among the Greeks and Romans. 

The command of Alexander to spare the house of the 
poet Pindar, if it shows a degree of literary culture, indi- 
cates, on the other hand, that moral barbarism which 
asserts a right to the spoils of the conquered. In China, 
we find the same state of things ; vae victis is the sad 
undertone in every narrative of military glory, relieved, 
indeed, by brilliant instances of generosity and mercy. 
We find an invading chief enjoining, imder penalty of 
death, respect for the very trees that overshadow the 
tomb of a philosopher, and at the same time setting a 
price on the head of a rival prince. 

Every military leader proclaims, like xAchilles, that 



444 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

" laws are not made for him ; " yet we do not despair of 
being able to show that laws existed in war as well as in 
peace, even though they were systematically trampled on. 
With this view, we shall call attention to the following 
facts : 

First: — In the conduct of war, the persons and prop- 
erty of non-combatants were required to be respected. 

This we infer from the praise bestowed on humane 
leaders, and the reprobation meted out to the cruel. In 
Chinese history, the example of those who have achieved 
the easiest and most permanent conquests is always on 
the side of humanity. 

Second: — In legitimate warfare, the rule was not to 
attack an enemy without first sounding the drum, and 
giving him time to prepare for defense. 

The following instance goes beyond this require- 
ment, and reminds us of the code of chivalry which made 
it infamous to take advantage of an antagonist. The 
Prince of Sung declined to engage a hostile force while 
they were crossing a stream, and waited for them to 
form in order of battle before giving the signal to ad- 
vance. He was beaten, and, when reproached by his 
officers, he justified himself by appealing to ancient usage. 
" The true soldier," said he, '' never strikes a wounded 
foe, and always lets the gray-headed go free. In ancient 
times it was forbidden to assail an enemy who was not in 
a state to resist. I have come near losing my kingdom, 
but I would scorn to command an attack without first 
sounding the drum." 

We are not surprised to learn that the captains of 
that age " laughed at the simplicity of the unfortunate 
prince." 

After the battle of Agincourt the French commander 
might have been laughed at on the same grounds. Not 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 445 

only did he allow the English to cross the Somme, he even 
sent a message to the King asking him to name a day for 
the engagement. 

Third: — A war was not to be undertaken without at 
least a decent pretext. 

These words, in fact, are almost a translation of an 
oft-quoted maxim, Shih ch'u yu ming, " For war you 
must have a cause that may be named." This indicates 
that passion and cupidity were held in check by public 
opinion pronouncing its judgment in conformity with an 
acknowledged standard of right. 

Another maxim, equally well known, makes the justice 
of the cause a source of moral power which goes far to 
compensate the inequality of physical force. 

" Soldiers are weak in a bad cause, but strong in a 
good one," said the ancient Chinese, assigning as high a 
place to the moral element as our own poet, when he 
says, — " Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just." 

Fourth: — A cause always recognized as just was the 
preservation of the balance of power. 

This principle called to arms not merely the States 
immediately threatened, but those also which by their 
situation, appeared to be remote from danger. 

Not to speak of combinations to resist the aggressions 
of other disturbers of the public peace, we find, 320 b. c, 
six States brought into line to repress the ambition of 
Ch'in. This powerful coalition, the fruit of twenty years' 
toil on the part of one man, who is immortalized as the 
type of the successful negotiator, was, we may add, after 
all destined to fail of its object. The common enemy 
succeeded in detaching the members of the league, and 
in overcoming them one after another. The arch of 
States which protected the throne of their suzerain be- 
ing destroyed, the conqueror swept away the last vestige 



446 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

of the house of Chou, which for upwards of eight hun- 
dred years had exercised a feudal supremacy over the 
princes of China. Proclaiming himself under the title of 
Shih Huang Ti, the " first of the autocratic sovereigns," 
he abolished the feudal constitution of the empire, at the 
same time that he completed the Great Wall. His suc- 
cessors to the present day are called Huang Ti, and the 
system of centralized government which he inaugurated 
is as firmly established as the Great Wall itself. 

Fifth: — The right of existence, prior to the revolution 
just noticed, was, in general, held sacred for the greater 
States which held in fief from the Imperial Throne. 

This right is often appealed to, and proves effectual in 
the direst extremity; e. g., — the Prince of Ch'i, at the 
head of a strong force, enters Lu, with an evidently 
hostile intent. Chan Hsi, a minister of Lu, is sent to meet 
him, in the hope of arresting his progress. " The people 
of Lu appear to be very much alarmed at my approach," 
said the prince. ** True," replied the minister, '' the people 
are alarmed, but the ruler is not." " Why is not the ruler 
also," inquired the invader, " when his troops are in 
disorder, and his magazines as empty as a bell ? On what 
does he repose his confidence that he should affect to be 
superior to fear? " 

" He rests on the grant which his fathers received 
from the ancient emperors," said the minister. He then 
proceeded to vindicate the rights of his master, under 
what was recognized as the traditional law of the em- 
pire, with such force that the prince desisted from his 
purpose, and withdrew without any further act of 
violence. 

A similar instance, it will be remembered, has been 
cited already in another connection, — the case in which 
a prince, after urging in vain this same plea, — the sacred- 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 447 

ness of the imperial grant, — was saved from humiliation or 
extinction by the mediation of neighboring powers, who 
recognized and were determined to uphold the principle. 

A third example of the kind is one in which the exist- 
ence of the now feeble remnant of the imperial domain 
was itself at stake. The Prince of Ch'u, after a victorious 
campaign against other foes, crossed the Rubicon and 
entered the territories of the house of Chou, with the 
evident intention of seizing the imperial throne. The 
emperor, unable to oppose armed resistance, dispatched 
Wang Sun Man, one of his ministers, to convey a supply 
of provisions to the invading army, and to ascertain the 
designs of its leader. The latter veiled his purpose in 
figurative language, asking to be informed as to the 
" weight of the nine tripods," — insinuating that, if not 
too heavy, he intended to carry them away. The min- 
ister, without answering directly, gave the history of 
the tripods, relating how they had been cast in bronze 
by Ta Yu, the founder of the first great dynasty, and 
emblazoned with a chart of the empire in rehef ; how for 
fifteen centuries they had been preserved as emblems 
of the imperial dignity; and, exposing in a masterly 
manner the necessity of respect for that venerable power 
to the order of the several States, he concluded by saying 
— " All this being true, why should Your Highness ask 
the weight of the tripods ? " 

The chief, struck by the force of his arguments, which, 
like the most effective on such occasions, were purely 
historical, renounced his nefarious purpose, and retired 
to his own dominions. 

Sixth: — Finally, the rights of neutrals were admitted, 
and to a certain extent respected. 

It has been remarked that, in the wars of Greece, there 
were no neutrals. Those who desired to be such^ if they 



448 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

were so situated as to be of any weight in the conflict, 
were always compelled to declare themselves on one side 
or the other. This was not the case in China. The neu- 
tral frequently rejected the overtures of both parties, and 
his territories interposed an effectual barrier in the way 
of the belligerents. We have numerous instances of pas- 
sage bemg granted to troops without further participation 
in the conflict, and one case in which a wise statesman 
warns his master against the danger of such an impru- 
dent concession. '' In a former war," said he, *' you 
granted it to your detriment; if you do so again, it will 
be to your ruin." His chief failed to profit by the warn- 
ing; and the prince thus unjustly favored, after destroy- 
ing his antagonist, turned about and took possession of 
the territory of his friend. 

CONCLUSION. 

It is, as we have intimated, quite possible that text- 
books on the subject of international relations may have 
existed in ancient China, without coming down to our 
times, just as the Greeks had books on that subject, of 
which nothing now survives but their titles. Whether 
this conjecture be well founded or otherwise, enough re- 
mains, as we have shown, to prove that the States of 
ancient China had a Law written or unwritten, and more 
or less developed, which they recognized in peace and 
war. The Book of Rites and the Histories of the period 
attest this. 

Of these histories, one was acknowledged as constitu- 
ting in itself a kind of international code. I allude to the 
Annals of Lu edited by Confucius and extending over 
two centuries and a half. Native authors afiirm that the 
awards of praise and blame expressed in that work, often 
in a single word, were accepted as judgments from which 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 449 

there was no appeal, and exercised a restraining influ- 
ence more potent than that of armies and navies. 

Chinese statesmen have pointed out the analogy of their 
own country at that epoch with the political divisions of 
modem Europe. In their own records, they find usages, 
words, and ideas, corresponding to the terms of our 
modern international law; and they are by that fact the 
more disposed to accept the international code of Christen- 
dom, which, it is no Utopian vision to believe, will one 
day become a bond of peace and justice between all the 
nations of the earth. 



XXIII 

DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 

INTERNATIONAL diplomacy is an art new to the 
Chinese, but one for which they evince a marvel- 
lous aptitude. From the inquiry on which we are 
about to enter, it will, we think, be made apparent that 
with them it is rather the revival of a lost art, — an art in 
the creation of which they can claim the distinction of 
precedence over all existing nations. 

Under that famous dynasty of Chou when sages were 
born, and when those books were produced which rule 
the thought of the empire, diplomacy took its rise. Akin 
to the spirit of war, it flourished most in that period when 
the central power had lost its control, and vassal states 
engaged in ceaseless struggles over the division of their 
patrimony.* 

Diplomacy may be defined as the art of conducting the 
intercourse of nations. It supposes the existence of states 

* There are three well known works that relate to this period, 
viz : — 

The History of the Warring States, called Chan Kuo Ts'e. 

A Romance founded on the preceding, called Lieh Kuo Chih, 
an expanded history of the feudal ages. 

The National History of Sze Ma, called Shih Chi. 

As an authority, the Romance is of no value. The National 
History derives its materials from the same source as the other 
two works, but, as they have been passed through the sieve and 
weighed in the balance of the great author, I have taken it for 
my guide so far as facts are concerned, reserving to myself 
always the right of interpretation, 

450 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 451 

which carry on their intercourse on a footing of equahty. 
This makes it evident why it flourished in the period 
referred to, and why it disappeared for two thousand 
years, to reappear in our own day, Hke a river that, after 
flowing for a time underground, rises to the surface with 
an increase of volume. As etiquette is the outgrowth of 
a society of individuals, so diplomacy springs from a 
society of states. Robinson Crusoe, spending his life on a 
lonely island, can hardly be supposed to occupy his 
thoughts with the rules of good breeding, and, although 
" Monarch of all he surveyed," he had no use for diplo- 
macy. 

The triumph of Ch'in, by which these numerous States 
were swept from the arena, was the death-blow of 
diplomacy. 

The empire was thenceforth one and indivisible, from 
the desert of Tartary to the borders of Yunnan, and from 
the foot of the Himalayas to the shores of the eastern 
sea. No rival, no equal, was known to exist on the face 
of the globe. Envoys no longer sped on secret missions 
from court to court. Alliances ceased to be formed, be- 
cause there was none whose friendship could bring 
strength, or whose opposition could occasion danger. 
The outside world was synonymous with barbarism, and 
the '' inner land " comprised, for the Chinese, the whole 
of human civilization. Inferior states came with tribute, 
and went home laden with patronizing gifts. Diplomacy 
in any proper sense was impossible. All that the Chinese 
of later ages could know of it was a legend of the past, 
which connected itself with a few illustrious names. 

The best way to treat the subject will be to take up 
those " names," and evoke from them the busy actors in 
a slow but momentous revolution. 

The revolution, which some of them endeavoured to 



452 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

further, while others strove in vain to arrest, was th§ 
rise in the north-west of an ambitious, aggressive, semi- 
barbarous power, which eventually swallowed up its 
rivals, and remained sole master of the field. 

To trace the steps by which a petty principality, the 
guardian of a remote frontier, advanced to such emi- 
nence that all the older and more civilized states com- 
bined to check its progress, forms one of the most in- 
structive chapters of Chinese history. Of the early 
stages of the unfolding drama, we can only remark that, 
as in the later stage, the principal actors on the side of 
the growing power appear to have been foreigners. The 
princes of Ch'in, rude and uncultivated as they were, 
displayed for the most part that element of greatness, 
which consists in the choice of the fittest instruments. 
The Duke Hsiao (368 b. c), conscious of the backward 
state of his people, made proclamation that if any man, 
native or foreign, should devise a new method for pro- 
moting the prosperity of his dominions, he would be re- 
warded by a grant of land and a patent of nobility. 

One instance out of many will suffice to illustrate the 
effect of this policy. A young man by the name of 
Shang Yang, who had devoted himself to the study of 
political science, came to the court of Wei, his native 
state, in quest of employment. The prince was struck 
by his talents, but hesitated to take him into his service. 
" Kill him then," said an old minister, '* but by no means 
allow him to give his great abilities to the service of a 
rival state." The prince did neither, and Shang Yang 
proceeded to the court of Ch'in, where he was invested 
with high office, and reformed everything, from army 
discipline to land tenure. It was largely through his 
influence that his adopted country attained such power 
as to threaten the independence of its neighbors. 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 453 

It was then that diplomacy came on the stage as a 
leading factor in deciding the destiny of states. In more 
tranquil periods, it had occupied itself with matters of 
ceremony, — missions of compliment to express felicita- 
tion or condolence; or, if negotiation was engaged in, it 
seldom rose higher than the arrangement of the terms of 
a marriage. But now the diplomat became the most 
conspicuous figure of the age, rising above the general, 
because generals marched as he directed ; more influential 
than princes, because the prince decided in accordance 
with the far-sighted views of his diplomatic adviser. 
Jove sat wrapped in his pavilion of clouds, and Mercury 
engrossed the scene as he sped back and forth on winged 
sandals. 

If we follow some of these envoys, we shall not only 
obtain an impression of the importance of their functions, 
but get a clearer view of the history of the period than 
any other stand-point can afford us. 

The scene is that portion of China lying to the north 
of the river Yangtze; the period of time, that in which 
Alexander and his successors were extending their con- 
quests in western Asia. 

The first diplomats to challenge our attention are Su 
Ch'in and Chang I. They are not, like Talthybius and 
Eurybates,* mere heralds or post-boys, whose duty it is 
to carry a message, and blow a trumpet. They are states- 
men, full of self-acting energy; and each opposed to the 
other in a conflict that ends only with life. As in Greece, 
there was a school of statesmanship in which they ac- 
quired their arts, and above all the art of persuasion. 
The Academy to which they resorted was a wild gorge 
in the mountains of Honan, and the master to whose in- 

* Compare this latter name, meaning " one who walks abroad," 
with " walkers," — ancient Chinese for " envoys." 



454 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

structions they listened is known to posterity by no other 
name than that of Kuei Ku Tze, '* Philosopher of the 
Devil's Hollow." 

I have read the books ascribed to his pen, but find in 
them nothing that can account for the eminence of his 
disciples ; — nothing even that could have afforded them 
a suggestion of the career which they pursued with such 
wonderful success. The fact is, this lover of solitude 
was not a diplomatist, but an educator. Books were few 
in those days, existing only in manuscript copies ; and 
the knowledge of letters, very restricted. It follows that 
the influence of the teacher was greater than it now is, 
when books are cheap, and libraries accessible to all. 

Emerging from seclusion with the full consciousness 
of superior intelligence, Su Ch'in thought only of carry- 
ing his wares to the most promising market. That 
market was the court of the rude, rising power of the 
northwest, whose princes welcomed all who had anything 
to teach, and rewarded them with unexampled munifi- 
cence. He was a native of the central state, born under 
the immediate sway of the suzerain; but he did not 
scruple to point out, to a great vassal, the way in which 
he might crush all lesser rivals, and possess himself of 
the throne of his imperial master. " My wings," replied 
the Prince, " are not sufficiently grown for so high a 
flight ; " and so he dismissed the dusty traveller, who 
sought prematurely to embroil him with his fellow 
princes. 

Mortified by ill success, Su turned homeward, vowing 
that the Prince of Ch'in should repent the blunder of 
suffering him to escape, after having rejected his advice. 
Arriving in rags, his wife and his brothers' wives treated 
him with ill-concealed disrespect. They looked on him 
as stark mad when, instead of applying himself to some- 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 455 

thing profitable, he resumed his former studies with 
fresh ardor. 

Su not only took pains to improve his style of speak- 
ing and writing, so that his argument would come with 
force from tongue or pen; he studied the history of each 
of the feudal states, acquainted himself with the per- 
sonnel of their courts, drew maps of the empire, made 
estimates of the population and military strength of its 
several parts, and sketched plans of hypothetical cam- 
paigns. 

After two years of intense application, he set off for 
the court of Yen, with a mind better furnished than on 
the occasion of his first abortive attempt. The capital 
of Yen is represented by Peking, and there it was that 
Su entered on a career of successful diplomacy, which 
extended over more than twenty years, and made him for 
all time the type of a Chinese diplomat. His patience, 
with him a leading virtue, was still to be sorely tried. 
Without money or influence, he found no ready way 
to open the doors of the great ; and, for a whole year, he 
danced attendance on numerous courtiers, before he could 
induce anyone to procure him an interview with the 
Prince. 

That interview was decisive. Su was not the only one 
who saw the danger to which the other states were ex- 
posed by the aggressions of Ch'in, but he was the only 
one who saw how it could be averted. In eloquent terms 
he set forth the urgency of immediate action, and showed 
that the only hope of successful resistance lay in the for- 
mation of an alliance, which, diverting the forces of the 
six states from the mad work of mutual destruction, 
would turn their united strength against their common 
foe. 

The Prince was delighted. The feasibility of the 



456 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

scheme was no longer doubtful; and, by carrying it into 
execution, he would secure the honor of taking the lead 
in a patriotic movement of unparalleled importance. In- 
vesting Su with the rank of ambassador, he despatched 
him with general credentials to the courts of the other 
five powers, — a precedent which the Chinese ministers of 
our day recalled when they sent Mr. Burlingame on a 
mission to the great powers of the two worlds, — a prece- 
dent which they still follow in accrediting a single envoy 
to half the courts of Europe. 

Taking in order the courts of Chao, Han, and Wei, and 
then moving eastward to the court of Ch'i, Su exposed 
to each his plan of mutual defence, obtaining from each 
a pledge conditioned on the adhesion of all the rest. 
Further south, on the banks of the middle Yangtze, 
which then formed the southern limit of the empire and of 
civilization, was a power whose definite acceptance of the 
plan was essential to its success. This was the kingdom 
of Ch'u, occupying nearly the ground of the present 
province of Hupei. 

Flattered by the cunning envoy with the hope of be- 
coming head of the league, the Prince of Ch'u entered 
into it with great zeal, and sent Su on his return journey, 
loaded with fresh honors. The last link was thus 
added to a chain which he had been long and patiently 
forging, — a chain strong enough to keep an unscrupulous 
aggressor within bounds, and to secure in a great meas- 
ure the blessings of peace to a family of states hitherto 
in perpetual conflict. 

The achievement was one, the difficulty and grandeur 
of which it is not easy to over-estimate. The man who 
conceived the plan, and, with steady purpose, carried it 
through, deserved all the honors that were heaped upon 
him. Like Prince Bismarck, who, to the chancellorship 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 457 

of the empire, added that of the kingdom of Prussia, Su 
held a duplicate, or rather a multiple office. His chief 
dignity was that of President of the Sextuple Alliance; 
and, in order that he might render it effective, each of 
the six powers conferred on him the seal of a separate 
Chancellorship. 

Turning northward with a strong escort and immense 
retinue, he came to the border of his native state, which, 
years before, he had quitted in the guise of a palmer, 
staff in hand. Here he was met by messengers from the 
Emperor, who offered him a banquet, and gave him a 
welcome on behalf of their master, who, says the his- 
torian, " was alarmed at the power and magnificence of 
his quondam subject." A better explanation would be a 
generous acknowledgment of the success of Su Ch'in; 
or better still, a desire to make use of Su's diplomatic 
triumphs to restore the sinking prestige of the empire, 
menaced by the growing power of Ch'in. 

What wonder that the members of his own family, 
who had treated him so shabbily, should now meet him 
with demonstrations of respect ! " How comes it," he 
said to his elder brother's wife, who was throwing her- 
self at his feet, " that you treat me so differently to-day 
from the time when I came home from the first journey? " 
*' Because," said she with naive candor, " you are now 
a great officer and have plenty of money." 

Su was kind to his poor relations, and, distributing 
money with a lavish hand, proceeded to the Court of 
Chao. 

There it was that he fi'xed his headquarters; not that 
the kingdom was great, or the prince influential, but 
because its geographical situation was such as to make 
it, to borrow a scientific phrase, the centre of political 
pressure. "From this point," says the historian, "by 



458 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the hand of a herald, he launched at the Prince of Ch'in 
a copy of the six-fold League." Imagine the satisfac- 
tion with which he submitted that document to the in- 
spection of a potentate . who had rejected his services, 
and who was now to be confined by it, as with a chain, 
within his proper bounds ! '' For fifteen years," adds the 
historian, '* the armies of Ch'in did not dare to show 
themselves beyond the mountain pass of Han Ku." 

What proof of success could be more striking! What 
doubt that, during this long period, Su had occasion to 
repeat often and again his weary circuit, in order to 
maintain his hold on the inharmonious elements which 
he had brought under his control ! 

On the East coast of Africa, there are places in which, 
we are told, it is impossible to induce three men to go 
together on an errand, because each fears that the other 
two may combine and sell him into slavery. So it was 
with these '* warring states," as they are called in Chinese 
history. Each one regarded its nearest neighbors with 
profound distrust and aversion. 

To overcome their centrifugal tendencies, and hold 
them together for so long a time, required a combination 
of qualities rarely equaled, perhaps never surpassed. 

The masterly arguments, by which Su had originally 
conquered that ascendancy, are given in extenso in the 
voluminous work of Sze Ma Ch'ien. They are clear and 
eloquent, but they read more like genuine state papers 
than like the speeches that Livy is wont to put into the 
mouths of his heroes. 

How skilfully he adapts his mode of address to the 
disposition of each ruler ! In one he kindles ambition ; in 
another he awakens jealousy, as his strongest passion, 
and directs it against the mighty foe. He practices on 
the fears of others, while flattering their pride; and one 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 459 

(the Prince of Han), who was on the point of attaching 
himself to Ch'in, he deterred effectually by employing a 
proverb which, from that fact, has acquired an undying 
celebrity : — " Better be a chicken's head than an ox's 
tail," or, as Caesar puts it, " First in a village rather than 
second at Rome." 

Su's brother, Su Tai, was also an able diplomat, and 
gave him effectual assistance in bringing about the union 
of the powers. But I speak of him at present for the 
sake of citing a famous apologue, of which he is the 
author. History has not preserved any of his longer 
speeches. He was perhaps wanting in that lofty elo- 
quence for which the elder Su was so distinguished, but 
he was endowed with a certain homely wit that carried 
conviction. Discoursing with one of the princes on the 
danger of disunion, he said : — " As I walked on the bank 
of the river, I saw a bird pecking at an oyster; the 
oyster closed its shell, and held the bird as in a vice. 
Just then, a fisherman came along, and captured both." 
The application was clear ; whoever might be represented 
by the foolish fowl and the equally foolish shell-fish, there 
could be no doubt as to who was the lucky fisherman. 
In a concise form, this fable continues to be used as a 
proverb.* It is one of those shining nuggets which, in 
China, the departing stream of time has left so plentifully 
scattered among its sands. 

Of the elder Su, I have said enough to establish his 
claim to transcendent talents. What was the League 
itself but a creation of genius? And its maintenance for 
fifteen years, was it not a marvelous manifestation of 
power? Yet, like other great men, he had his weak- 
nesses. Able in governing others, he was impotent to 
control his own passions ; and to that cause, more than to 

* When bird and fish quarrel, both fall a prey. 



46o THE LORE OF CATHAY 

any other, was due the final overthrow of the fabric 
which he had spent his Hfe in erecting. 

Through jealousy and anger, he made an enemy of 
Chang 1, who ever after sought to work his ruin. Yield- 
ing to a more tender passion, he became involved in an 
undiplomatic intrigue, flight and death being the dis- 
astrous consequence. 

Finding himself under the necessity of leaving the 
court of Yen, to escape the consequences of a liaison 
which he had formed with a princess, he begged the prince 
to send him on a mission to the kingdom of Ch'i, alleging 
that he could there promote his interests much better than 
by remaining at home. Arriving there, he entered the 
service of the foreign state ; and subsequently, his in- 
trigues against its welfare being detected, he was bound 
between two chariots and torn to pieces, — a melancholy 
emblem of the empire of that day, rent asunder by the 
opposing forces represented by the Leagues of the East 
and West. 

Su's conduct in the kingdom of Ch'i finds a pretty 
close parallel in that of Chetardie at the court of Russia, 
who narrowly escaped a like hideous fate.* 

Chang I stands next, by common consent, on the list of 
international statesmen of ancient times. In talent not 
much inferior to Su Ch'in, his career is wanting in that 
unity which imparts a kind of grandeur to the achieve- 
ments of Su. His life was divided between internal ad- 
ministration and external politics. 

* In a note to the Guide Diplomatique of de Martens, Volume 
I, page 83, we have a brief account of the incident alluded to. 
I cite here one or two Hnes only : — 

" La Chetardie, ambassadeur de France, avait eu la principale 
part^ la revolution qui plaQa Elisabeth sur la trone de Russia." 

" La Chetardie s'etait immisce dans les intrigues de cour . 
. . . . II ne tarda pas a s'en repentir." 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 461 

As administrator and military chief, he served by turns 
three or four states, always giving a temporary pre- 
ponderance to the one he served, — unlike his rival who 
served six at once, and promoted equally the interests of 
all. 

As a negotiator, he effected one or two powerful alli- 
ances; but his chief claim to distinction is the skill he 
showed in sowing discord among the members of the 
eastern league, to avenge himself for an insult received 
at the hand of a faithless friend. 

That insult was received on the threshold of his career. 
As Su had made an unsuccessful attempt in the north- 
west, so Chang began by a fruitless journey to Ch'u, in 
the south. In the meantime, his friend had risen to 
eminence, and he sought to join him at the court of 
Chao. Su, however, was as yet only forging the second 
link of his diplomatic chain. Whether he dreaded the 
disturbing influence of a mind too original to become a 
tool, or whether he feared that the lustre of Chang I's 
talent would obscure the brightness of his own, he treated 
him with disdain, and found means to send him away 
from the scene of his own activity. In his eagerness to 
rid himself of a possible rival, he even supplied him with 
money and with attendants, to escort him as far as the 
capital of the north-western kingdom. 

Chang saw through the stratagem, and vowed that 
Su should repent of it. Winning the confidence of the 
Prince, he rose to the highest positions in the state, being 
sometimes general, sometimes diplomatic envoy, and more 
than once clothed with the dignity of prime minister. 

As head of the administration, he developed the re- 
sources of the state, and prepared the way for its ultimate 
triumph. As a leader of troops he was uniformly suc- 
cessful; but it was in a third character, — that of diplo- 



462 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

matist,-r-that he performed the most marvelous feats. 
Labouring to undo the work of Su, he contrived to keep 
him in a state of perpetual anxiety during his life-time; 
and ultimately to effect the dissolution of the confederacy 
immediately on the death of its founder. 

The most remarkable incidents in his career occurred 
in the kingdom of Ch'u. On his first visit, which, as 
we have said, was unsuccessful, he had the misfortune 
to be set upon by his enemies and badly beaten. Taunted 
by his wife for his damaged appearance, he opened his 
mouth and asked her to see if his tongue was in its place. 
On her answering in the affirmative, he added, — " With 
this I shall retrieve my fortunes," — and he kept his word. 
So great, indeed, were his powers of persuasion that he 
often disarmed hostility, and sometimes raised himself 
to power, where he had been menaced with destruction. 
To cite only one instance : — The Prince of Ch'in engaged 
in war with Ch'u, stirred up perhaps by his minister's 
hatred for the state where he had suffered his first great 
humiliation. The army of Ch'u was defeated, and Ch'in 
demanded, as the price of peace, the cession of a coveted 
territory in exchange for another. The worsted Chief 
replied with a grim joke : — " Give me your chancellor, 
and I will yield the territory, without asking a foot of 
ground in exchange." — The Prince of Ch'in repeated this 
flattering proposal to his minister, but with no thought 
of compliance. 

To his surprise, Chang I replied : — " 1 am ready ; send 
me to the camp of the enemy." 

On arrival he was thrown into prison, and menaced 
with death ; but he had one acquaintance, whom he could 
rely on as amicus in curia. Through this man, he con- 
veyed to the reigning beauty a hint that the western 
prince was about to send a beautiful woman as his ran- 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 463 

som. The lady took alarm, and procured his release with- 
out waiting for the ransom. 

Just at that moment, the news of Su's death came to 
his ears, suggesting the possibility of turning his tempor- 
ary captivity into a veritable victory. Seeking an inter- 
view with the Prince, under guise of thanking him for 
sparing his life, he sought to repay his debt of gratitude 
by tendering the best advice he was able to offer; that 
was that he should abandon the confederacy, and throw 
in his fortunes with his powerful neighbor. The Prince 
desired to hear the reasons for such a startling proposi- 
tion; and Chang set them forth with clearness and force, 
concluding a discourse, not inferior to Su's best speeches, 
with a recommendation to cement the peace by accepting 
his neighbor's son as a hostage, and giving his own in 
exchange ; and further to consolidate the union, by asking 
in marriage a princess of Ch'in. No translation can do 
justice to his masterly argument, because it bristles all 
over with allusions to places whose names are strange 
to European ears, and facts of history which, out of China, 
have no significance. 

But the Prince, to whom it was addressed, understood 
it. Every word took effect; — how deep the effect may 
be judged from the fact that his kinsman, Ch'ii Yuan, 
the gifted poet, tried in vain to deter him from following 
the counsel of Chang I. 

His energetic remonstrance is not too long to give 
in full. *' Your Highness," said he, '' has once and again 
been the victim of Chang I's deceptions. When your 
enemy had come into your hands, I took it for granted 
you would roast him alive. Now if you have relented 
so far as to refrain from putting him to death, why should 
you go a step further, and listen to his deceitful advice ? " 

The prince persisted, and, to make a long story short, 



464 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the poet, like Ahithophel, went away and destroyed him- 
self, his hapless fate being commemorated by the annual 
festival of dragon boats. 

On his way home, Chang visited the court of Han, 
and succeeded in detaching the prince of that country 
also from the confederacy. 

Arriving at the capital of Ch'in, picture to yourselves 
the glory of his triumphal entry. He had gone forth 
alone and unattended, a voluntary peace-offering, to be 
sacrificed to the resentment of a hostile state. He re- 
turned leading in his train the envoys of that state, and 
those of another hereditary enemy. 

The Prince of Ch'in was duly sensible of the value of 
this service, and conferred on the hero the lordship of 
five cities. So well had Chang I succeeded in his attempt 
to detach Ch'u and Han, that he resolved not to desist 
from his undertaking until the confederacy should be 
utterly demolished. At his request, his master com- 
missioned him to proceed successively to the capitals of 
Chao, of Yen, and of Ch'i. The histories tell us what 
he said to each prince; how he tempered menace with 
flattery, so that, on reading each several discourse, we 
are not surprised that the prince, to whom it was ad- 
dressed, should feel impelled by ambition, as well as by 
prudence, to follow the policy so powerfully advocated. 

One by one, all of the states which Su had so labor- 
iously arrayed against Ch'in, Chang I had the satisfaction 
of seeing at the feet of his master, humbly acknowledg- 
ing the hegemony of the north-western power. Recall 
the long negotiations that were required to bring the 
petty states of Greece to accept the hegemony of Sparta 
or Athens, and you can appreciate the greatness of 
Chang Ts diplomatic triumph. 

For three centuries, the leadership among the feudal 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 465 

states had been the great object of ambition. Four of 
them had enjoyed it in succession, feeling satisfied with 
that distinction without dreaming of attaining the im- 
perial yellow. 

Ch'in was the last to erect the standard of leadership, 
and Chang I's diplomacy was the proximate influence 
that led the other states to rally round it. A century 
was yet to elapse before Ch'in became bold enough to 
usurp the imperial throne, — an event which followed 
naturally on the destruction of the most loyal of its 
feudatories. But that is a history into which we have 
no time to enter. Nor have we time to pursue the for- 
tunes of this consummate master of diplomatic intrigue 
further than to say that, losing power through the death 
of his patron, he returned to his native state, where he 
was invested with the honors of prime minister, and 
died the following year. 

After the death of Chang, the eastern states, one by 
one, broke away from their allegiance to Ch'in. Kung 
Sun Yen, who all along had opposed the policy of 
Chang I, now that the latter was dead, exerted himself 
to resuscitate the confederacy, and succeeded in doing so, 
as Chang had succeeded in dissolving it, on the death 
of Su. Through his efforts, five of them were formed 
into a phalanx, with hostile spears pointing to the North- 
west. Kung Sun, as successor to Su, received the grand 
seal of chancellor of the union. This ephemeral success, 
easier far than the untried enterprise of his predecessor, 
causes him to be ranked among the noted diplomatists of 
that troubled period. We dismiss him with this brief 
notice, merely calling attention to him as chancellor of 
the second Eastern league. 

In this second league, the principality of Chao took a 
leading part, as it had done in the first. In command of 



466 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

the gate of the west, its strategic position was imposing; 
but it owed its influence in the league to its good fortune 
in possessing the ablest general and the most gifted 
statesman of the age. The general was Lien P'o, and 
the statesman Lin Hsiang Ju, of whom we shall speak 
only in his character of envoy and negotiator. 

Two incidents in his history will serve to throw light 
on the times in which he lived. His prince possessed a 
gem of great value, like the koh-i-noor, unique, — the envy 
of neighboring potentates. The Prince of Ch'in sent an 
embassy to offer fifteen cities in exchange for it. Its 
owner was afraid to refuse, and equally afraid to comply, 
lest the other party should not act in good faith. Lin, 
then a young official in the household, said to his master : 
' — *' You need not fear the loss of the gem ; send me 
with it, and, if the cities are not surrendered, I will be 
answerable for its safe return." 

Arriving at the court of Ch'in, and appearing in the 
presence of the prince for the purpose of offering the 
gem, he discovered that the prince was inclined to play 
him false, by detaining the gem, and withholding at 
least a part of the price. On perceiving this, Lin stealthily 
slipped the gem into the bosom of a trusty servant, who, 
following an unfrequented path, conveyed it safely home. 
Lin, of course, remained at court, and, when the fact be- 
came known, he offered to give his life, if required, in lieu 
of the gem. The prince, appreciating his courage and 
fidelity, let him go unharmed. On reaching home, he was 
loaded with honours ; and one hopes the faithful domestic 
was not forgotten. It is related of one of the crown 
jewels of Russia that, in a time of trouble, it was once 
given to a servant to convey to a place of safety. The 
servant said as he departed : — " If I should be slain by 
the way, you will find the jewel in my body." He was 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 467 

slain, and his master, recovering his body, found the 
jewel in his stomach. 

The other incident in the life of Lin relates to a cere- 
monious meeting of two princes. They met on the com- 
mon frontier, each accompanied by his diplomatic adviser. 
In a festive humor, the Prince of Ch'in asked his brother 
prince to favor him with a specimen of the music in 
which he was known to be a proficient. The request was 
unsuspectingly complied with, but Lin saw in it a design 
to treat his master with indignity. '' Now," said he to 
the Prince of Ch'in, ** it is your turn ; please beat the 
tabor after the manner of your country." The prince 
hesitating, he added : — *' If you refuse, I shall spatter 
my blood on your royal robes, as a protest against the 
affront you have put upon my master." Hearing this, 
the guards rushed upon him, and were about to cut him 
down ; but his fearless bearing held them in check, and 
the haughty prince, not wishing to bring the conference 
to a tragic ending, gave a few beats on the tabor. The 
princes parted on equal terms; and Lin was raised to 
the highest rank in the state, for having saved the 
honour of his master. 

When Bismarck lighted his cigar in the diet at Frank- 
fort, — a privilege regarded as belonging exclusively to 
the ambassador of Austria, — all Germany was astounded 
at his audacity. Not less were the states of China, at 
the boldness of Lin, in compelling the mightiest prince 
of the empire to keep time to h-*s master's music. In 
either case, a trivial act was clothed with a grave political 
significance ; and it evinced diplomatic talent of the high- 
est order to turn it to account. 

The famous general Lien P'o, who, previous to this oc- 
currence, had enjoyed the first rank in his state, felt 
it as a personal outrage that a man, whom he looked 



468 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

on as an upstart, should suddenly be raised above him. 
Forgetting that the statesman is above the soldier, and 
that good diplomacy requires the highest kind of states- 
manship; he let it be known that, wherever he should 
meet his rival, he would insult him to his face. Lin, 
hearing of this threat, took pains to avoid a meeting. 
The general, remarking this, sent him a half contemptu- 
ous message, asking an explanation of his strange and 
undignified conduct, which he was not at liberty to im- 
pute to fear, after the proofs he had seen of Lin's per- 
sonal courage. Lin replied : — " If I avoid an encounter, 
it is because your life and mine are indispensable to the 
safety of our country. If Ch'in refrains from attacking 
Chao, it is on account of us two. The Prince of Ch'in 
would be delighted to see us fall by each other's hands." 

The general was so struck with this patriotic answer, 
and particularly with Lin's moral courage in exposing 
himself to a suspicion of cowardice rather than bring a 
calamity on his country, that he frankly confessed him- 
self in fault, in the ceremonious fashion then in vogue. 
Coming to Lin's door with a rod in his hand, instead 
of using it on Lin, he begged that it might be applied to 
his own back. The two rushed into each other's arms, 
swore to be brothers, and sealed the covenant by drink- 
ing a cup of wine, mingled with blood drawn from the 
veins of both. Who, on hearing this, can fail to recall 
the manner in which Aristides and Themistocles laid aside 
their deadly feud, — how, when Xerxes was threatening 
the liberties of Greece, knowing that union is strength, 
they dug a pit and formally buried their enmity, not to 
be resurrected until the danger was past? 

If I have followed the career of particular statesmen 
with considerable detail, it is because I have thought 
I might in that way present a more vivid picture of the 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 469 

diplomacy of the period. Viewed from a moral stand- 
point, that diplomacy was not above criticism. It bears 
little resemblance to the transparent candor and immac- 
ulate integrity, which characterize the European diplo- 
macy of our own day ! For has not diplomacy, like every- 
thing else, risen above the level of former ages? Is it 
not a recognized maxim, in our enlightened times, that 
honesty is the best policy? Is it not equally a maxim 
that the advantage of each is found in the prosperity of 
all? What representative of a European power ever dis- 
guises the truth, or thinks of taking advantage of the 
ignorance or weakness of the power with which he is 
called to negotiate? In fact, what is diplomacy, as we 
understand it, but another name for philanthropy? 

Chinese statesmen of the period under review had not 
yet attained to this sublime conception ; " let every man 
work for his own master," was the maxim they openly 
professed, — a maxim often quoted to excuse deviations 
from rectitude. 

Envoys went and came on all occasions calling for 
felicitation or condolence, and I will not assert that they 
were too. high-minded to improve the opportunity to spy 
out the nakedness of the land; or that custom forbade 
them, while professing peace, to make preparation for 
war. 

There existed a code of recognized rules for the regu- 
lation of intercourse by means of diplomatic envoys. 1 
have touched on these in a previous chapter. My object 
in this, has been rather to show diplomacy in action, than 
to set forth either rules or theories. The following facts 
will prove interesting : — 

I. — Among the privileges of ambassadors, as laid 
down in the ancient books of China, we find no trace of 
that convenient fiction known as extra-territoriality. 



470 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

The hospitable Spaniard, in Buenos Ayres, sends you 
a card of invitation to come to " your own house," in 
such and such a street. So, western peoples have agreed 
that a diplomatic envoy, as guest of the nation, shall be 
considered as living and moving on his own ground. It 
is a little singular that the Chinese never thought of 
expressing their sense of the inviolable sanctity of such 
envoys in a similar manner, especially as their language 
is not wanting in similar fictions, dictated by courtesy or 
flattery. 

As a principle, the sanctity of an ambassador's person 
was fully admitted ; but in practice, it was frequently 
violated. Nor is that to be wondered at, in a state of 
society in which ambassadors regarded it as their main 
business to mingle in court intrigues. 

2. — In the diplomacy of ancient China, there was no 
such thing as a minister plenipotentiary. 

The sovereign always held himself free to disavow the 
acts of his representative, whenever it might suit his 
policy so to do. When the Chinese were first confronted 
with that term, in their negotiations with the west, they 
expressed some surprise, and declined to accept it. '' There 
is only one plenipotentiary in the empire," they said; 
" that is the Emperor." It required nothing less than the 
storming of his forts to induce the Emperor to grant 
the title. 

3.- — In the diplomacy of ancient China, there was no 
such thing as a resident minister; they were all envoycs 
extraordinaires. 

But they found occasion to prolong their stay for 
months or years; and, in many cases, they were kept 
going back and forth so frequently as to accomplish all 
the purposes of residence, together with the additional 
advantage of frequent conference with their chiefs. 



DIPLOMACY IN ANCIENT CHINA 471 

As an example of the kind of reports they were ex- 
pected to make, I may mention that Su Tai, the brother 
of the more noted Su, of whom we have heard, was once 
sent as ambassador to Ch'i. On returning, his master 
desired him to report on the state of that country, and 
the character of its prince, with particular reference to 
the question whether he was aspiring to the hegemony, 
or had any prospect of attaining it. 

As an instance of frequent and prolonged missions, I 
may cite the case of Ch'en Chen. Being often sent on 
missions to Ch'u, he was accused by Chang I of enrich- 
ing himself without benefitting his chief. Charged with 
drawing emoluments from two states, and making himself 
a persona grata at the foreign court without, in any way, 
improving the state of foreign relations, he defended 
himself successfully ; and I only cite the case as an 
illustration of the point in hand. 

4. — The political relations of the great states of ancient 
China afford a remarkable analogy to those of the states 
of modern Europe. In the former, the diplomacy of the 
period turned on the question of furthering or checking 
the progress of one power, which appeared to aim at 
universal dominion. Who shall say that the situation in 
Europe may not be described under the same formula? 
Reversing the points of the compass, — a political map 
of the one might serve, mutatis mutandis, for that of the 
other. And who shall blame the Chinese for reading the 
wars and alliances of modern Europe in the light of their 
own ancient history ? When they read how for centuries 
the eyes of Russia have been fixed on the imperial city 
of the Bosphorus ; how the first Napoleon, on the eve of 
his disastrous expedition, predicted the danger of Europe 
becoming Cossack; how, in 1854, the advance of Russia 
was checked by another Napoleon, in concert with Eng- 



472 THE LORE OF CATHAY 

land; how, in 1878, she was compelled, by a conference 
of the Powers, to relinquish her prey when fairly within 
her grasp; and how in 1900 she absorbed Manchuria; — 
will they not believe that their great cycle has come round 
again, and that their own old drama is being repeated on 
a new and grander theater? 

Though the aptitude of the Chinese for diplomacy is 
freely admitted, it is not so generally known that their 
collisions with foreign powers have mostly sprung from a 
want of diplomatic tact. Their long isolation and the 
immensity of the empire under one sovereign led them to 
despise other nations, and in disputes with them to resort 
to violence, instead of diplomacy. 

In 1839, Lin brought on the opium war by depriving 
the foreign community of liberty and threatening them 
with death. 

In 1857, Yeh provoked the ' Arrow ' war by summarily 
executing for piracy a boat's crew sailing under the 
British flag. 

In 1797 and 1816, China demanded the kotow of vas- 
salage from Great Britain ; and in 1859 she demanded it 
from the United States, thus alienating those who might 
have been her friends. 

This spirit culminated in 1900 when a Tartar Dowager 
attempted to slaughter the envoys of eleven nations. 

China needs to learn in the school of adversity. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



" A girl is born," 139 

" A son is born," 140 

Abbe Hue, 49 

Academic Degrees, 304 

Academic Honors, 317; Legion 
of Honor, 360 

-<^sop, translation of, 145 

Age of philosophy, 34 

Agnosticism, Chinese, 42 

Alchem3^ based on Taoist ma- 
terialism, 53; "Book of 
Changes " = Transformation, 
70; extracts from Chinese 
teachers, 56; origin of, 182; 
original with China, 49, 71 ; 
source of chemistry, 44; still 
an occult science, 29; students 
pledged to secrecy, 55; West 
and East compared, 44, 66. 

Allusions, historical, etc., in 
Chinese literature, 135 

Ancestral worship, 178, 264; at- 
titude of Jesuits toward, 277; 
attitude of missionaries to- 
ward, 277 ; ceremonial of, 264 ; 
heart of religion of China, 
267; idolatry excrescence not 
essence, 277; influence of 
Buddhism, 270; objectionable 
features, 269; occasions for, 
272; only religion favored by 
State, 266; prayers to the 
dead, 273 ; relation to Chinese 
conservatism, 275 ; relation to 
Christianity, 275 ; relation of 
Confucius to it, 268; relation 
to social order, 270 ; relation to 
the Three Religions, 267; 
spontaneous in origin, 268 

** Annals of Lu," 448 

Antiquity, imitation of, 1 18 

Arrow War, The, 472 

Astronomy, Chinese, 29 



Authors, rewards of, 302 

Avery, Benj. P., Letter to Com- 
missioner Eaton, 282 

Awakening in China, 7 

Avicenna — Ebn-Cinna or Ibn 
Sina — Son of China, 51 

" Balance of Power ", 445 
Benevolence and good faith, 221 
"Book of Changes", 152, 242; 
/ Ching, basis of alchemy, 70 ; 
origin of, 242 
" Book 01 Odes ", 243, 350 
" Book of Rites ", 92, 242, 350 
Boxer Outbreak, 8, 472 
Buddhism, adoption of Taoist 
usages, 238; atheism of, 
185 ; authentic utterances, 240 ; 
claim to priority, 249; contri- 
bution of Christian terms, 261 ; 
contribution to Chinese 
thought, 253 ; element of hope, 
257; elsewhere than in China, 
255 ; Faith, Hope, Charity, 
259 ; forgeries, 239 ; influence 
on philosophy, 2>7\ introduced 
into China, 188; monasticism 
of, 185 ; oldest manuscripts, 
251; philosophy of, 186; plas- 
tic character of, 252 ; popular- 
ity in China, 184; preparation 
for Christianity, 249; prepar- 
ing way for Christian graces, 
258; relation to Christian eth- 
ics, 259; satisfied a conscious 
want, 254 : sources of knowl- 
edge of. 250 ; superiority of its 
divinities, 254; varying influ- 
ence in different ages, 252 
Buddhist temples. Location of, 
184 



Cardinal virtues. The, 219 



475 



476 



INDEX 



" Celestial Rhetoric ^ 361 
Chart of Chinese Ethics, 207, 

230 
Chart of Human Nature, 214, 

231 
Chart of Moral Excellence, 219, 

Chemistry and alchemy, 44 
Children, slow development of, 

284. 
China, democracy of, 311; dif- 
ferent forms of government, 
10; history of consolidation 
of, 452; New China, The, 8; 
reform, not incapable of, 8; 
revolutions in, 16 ; tributary 
states, 428 ; unity of, 9 
** China's Only Hope ", 19 
Chinese, The, amalgamated with 
Mongols, 425 ; chroniclers, not 
historians, 395 ; Confucianists, 
Buddhists, and Taoists at 
once, 191 ; first to use al- 
chemy, 49 ; fond of poetry, 75 ; 
in Central Asia. 415 ; influence 
of education, 281 ; influence on 
Tartars, 426; misunderstood, 
8 ; primitive type, 425 ; readi- 
ness to accept modifications, 

15 

Chinese characters, admiration 
of the people for, 113 

Chinese civilization, our indebt- 
edness to, 23 

Chinese conquest of China, 397 

Chinese diplomacy, early char- 
acter of, 469 

Chinese discoveries, 23 

Chinese history, study of, 387; 
three periods of, 427 

Chinese and Hindu history con- 
trasted, 388 

Chinese inventions, 23 

Chinese League, The first, 455 

Chinese literature, characteris- 
tics of, 112; refinement of, 
115; schools of, 125 

Chinese poetry. 75 

Chinese records, value of, 11 1 

Chinese style, varieties of, 114 



Chinese translations, 117 
Chronology of Dynasties, 405 
Chu Hsi, next to Confucius and 

Mencius as a teacher, 34 
Civil service, comparison with 
American methods, 328 ; coun- 
terpoise to absolutism, 324; 
development of. 312; examina- 
tions. 308, 314; examination 
questions, 322 ; grades of 
scholarship. 315; influence on 
the gentry, 325 ; number of 
candidates, 323 ; political bear- 
ings of, 324; primary object 
of, 309 ; safety valve, 324 ; sub- 
jects of examination, 321 
Coalition of the Three Relig- 
ions, 191 
Code of Chou Dynasty, 433 
Confucian Apocrypha, 87 
Confucianism, ability to absorb 
religions, 12 ; canon of, 241 ; 
compared with Christianity, 
176; compared with Taoism 
and Buddhism, 189; death, 
doctrine of, 99 ; inspiration of, 
241; origin of, 170; philoso- 
phy, not a religion, 178; pro- 
scription of, 188 ; skepticism 
of, 176; time, emblem of, 99 
Confucius, apocryphal character 
of many references, 87 ; as an 
editor. 78; born 551 b. c, 171; 
characterization of the EiViper- 
or, 433 ; compared with Bud- 
dha, 246; dogmatism of, 177; 
estimate of, by Mencius, 245 ; 
family traditions, 96; Filial 
Piety, doctrine of, 174; inspi- 
ration of, 160; international 
good faith, 443; memorabilia, 
98; modern conception of, 
246; modesty of, 247; musi- 
cian, a, 76; Plato, compari- 
son with, 106; poetry, place 
ofj 75; proverbs of, 173; real 
and mythical compared, 103 ; 
reforms of, 172 ; successor of, 
199; tomb of, 200; view of by 
native Christians, 248. 



INDEX 



477 



Conjugal fidelity, 212 
Competitive examinations (see 

also Civil service), 307 
Composition, training in, 292 
Conservation of energy, Chinese 

idea of, 41 
Cosmogony, Chinese, 38 

Degrees, academic, 304 
JJemocracy of China, 311 
Dictionary, The Great, 352 
Diplomacy in ancient China, 

450 
Diplomats of China, early, 453 
Divination, National Book of, 

361 
Drama, Chinese, 83 
Dualism in nature, 2)7 
Duties vs. rights, 226 
Dynasties, chronology of, 405; 

educational influence ofj 312 

Eaton, Commissioner, Letter 
from Benj. P. Avery, 282 

Educated, extent of informa- 
tion of the. 355 

Education, commencement of, 
286; committing to memory, 
289; common schools lacking, 
297; contributions for, 298; 
degrees, 304 ; examinations, 
303, 307 ; extent and scope of, 
355 ; fear as a motive, 290 ; fe- 
n^ale education, 299 ; extent of 
information, 355 ; government 
agency, 301 ; government rela- 
tion to. 297 ; grade of schools, 
296; history, study of, 307; 
home life not conducive to 
mental development, 285 ; in 
the home, 284; influence on 
national character, 281 ; means 
to an end, 301 ; misconcep- 
tions, 300; no national school 
system, 297; originality, want 
of, 287; private instruction, 
297; ratio of illiteracy. 300; 
school life, 286 ; stages of 
study, 288; subjects of, 321; 
support of, by the wealthy. 



298; teachers, reverence for, 
287; translation and composi- 
tion, 291 ; type of Chinese, 
321 ; universality of, 300 

Elixir of life, 62 

Emperor at Altar of Heaven, 
196 

Emperors, life of the, illus- 
trated in Hanlin Memoirs, 
362 

Empress Dowager, opposition 
to reform, 7 

Encyclopaedia, The Great, 330 

*' Encyclopaedia of Philosophy ", 
35, 352 

Envoy, sacred character of, 438 

Essays, style of, 123 

Ethical philosophy of China, 
205 

Ethics, Chart of Chinese, 207 

Evolution, Chinese conception 
of, 41 

Examination questions, 322 

Examination of Sacred Books, 
291 

Examinations, system of, 303 

Examiners, duties of, 305 

Fables in Chinese Literature, 
144 

Fear as a motive in education, 
290 

Feudalism in China, 401 

Filial Piety (see also Ancestral 
worship), bond of social or- 
der, 270; Confucian doctrine 
of, 174; doctrine of Confucius, 
Mencius and Plato, 106 

Five elements, The, 227 

Five, frequency of use of, 358 

Five Classics, 289 

Five orders of nobility, 433 

" Flowers of Talent ", 315 

Force, definition of, 41 

Fraternal duty, 212 

Future life, doctrine of, 153 

Genghis Khan, 410 

Genii, 236 

Geography and astrology, 433 



478 



INDEX 



Geography ofi Chinese, 424 

Girls' schools, 299 

God, belief in, 153 (see also 
Shang Ti) 

Golden Age of Chinese Letters, 
127 

Government relation to educa- 
tion, 297, 301 

Grade of schools, 296 

Great Study, The, 213 

Great Wall, The, 399, 409 

Gunpowder, invention of, 24 

Hanlin, The, 329; academy of 
inscriptions, 350; age of, 337; 
apartments of, 333 ; belief in 
occult sciences, 358 ; burned, 
330; ceremonies of, 334; con- 
stitution of, 341 ; duties of, 
348; founder of, 338; history 
ot 337; integral part of Gov- 
ernment, 346; library, the, 
334; membership of, 333; 
Memoirsof the Academy, 360: 
origin of name, 341 ; qualifi- 
cations for membership, 348; 
records of the Emperors, 364 ; 
simultaneous with discovery 
of printing, 340 

Hanlins (members of Hanlin 
Library), opposition to re- 
form, 17 

Heaven, personification of. 166 

Herodotus of China, 89 

Historians, four great, 393 

Historic movements, three 
great, 397 

Historical works, character of, 

393 
History, Chinese conception of, 
387; study of Chinese, 307, 

387 
Holy men, 243 
Home education, 284 
Hostages, 443 
Hsi An Fu, sacked by Tartars, 

418 
Human nature, view of, 215 

Idolatry in China, 165 



Illiteracy, ratio of, 300 
Immortality in Taoism, 235 
Immortality of the soul, be- 
lief in, 253 ; secret of, 56 
Immortals, manifestation of 

the, 236 
Imperial Academy, 329; mem- 
bership in, 317 
Imperial T'ung Wen College, 

Imperialism in Chinese Litera- 
ture, 361 
Individual and society, 212 
Individualism in Chinese litera- 
ture, 125 
Information, extent of among 

scholars, 355, 357 
Inspiration, Chinese ideas of, 

234 
Intellectual Awakening, 13 
Intercourse between States, 436 
International law in ancient 

China, 427 
International relations, charac- 
ter of, 444 

Kang Yii Wei, 20 

Kaotze on human nature, 216 

Kao Tsu, Founder of Hanlin, 

338 
I-uang Hsu, attempt at reform, 

7 ; at Temple of Heaven, 196 ; 

reform decrees, 20 
K'ung, successor to Confucius, 

199 

Laotze, Joctrines of, 180; Li 

Erh, founder of Taoism, 179 
Laureate, Title of, 307; duties 

of, 354 
Legion of Honor, 360 
Letter Writing, characteristics 

of, 130 
Li Erh. Laotze, founder of 

Taoism, 179 
Library of Hanlin, 334 
Literary style, different forms 

of, 118 
Lyric poetry, 83 



INDEX 



479 



Manchu invasion, The, 410 
Mandarins, position and duties 

of, 310 
"Manual of Filial Duty", 94; 

> 155. 

Mariner's compass, 26 
Mathematics. Chinese, 30 
Maxims for morals, 149 
Memory, committing to, 289 
Mencius, estimate of Confucius, 

245; on human nature, ;^i6; 

on study of nature, 32; treaty 

convention, a, 441 ; miracles, 

power of, 57 
Mongol invasion, 410 
Moral Excellence, Chart of, 219 
Moral sentiment, theory of, 221 
Mother Goose, 156 
Mothers, education by, 285 
Mythology of Taoism, 183 

Nature study, basis of Chinese 

philosophy, 33 
Neutrals, rights of, 447 
New Year's Eve, Song for, 79 
Nirvana, 185 

Nobility, five orders of, 433 
Non-combatants, treatment of, 

444 

Occult Sciences (see also Al- 
chemy), believed, 358 

Ode composed by the Emperor, 
331 

Officeholdingnot hereditary, 310 

Opium War, The, 472 

Parallelism in Chinese style, 
117; in education, 294 

Peabody, A Chinese, 298 

Philosophy, Chinese forms of, 
31, 33; Cartesian not Bacon- 
ian, 35 

Physics, Chinese, 30 

Planchette, 237 

Poetry, Chinese forms of, 75, 

^76, 79 

Poetry, Manners, Music, the 
educational tripos of Confu- 
cius, 76 L 



Political ideas, development of, 

10 
Polytheism and Idolatry of 

China, 165 
Porcelain, a Chinese art, 28 
Practical joking, 290 
Primitive Chinese type, 425 
Printed paper, respect for, 157 
Printing, invention of. 27 
" Promoted Scholars ", 315 
Propriety, sense of, 220 
Prose composition, iii 
Proverbs of Confucius, 173 
Providence, 255 
Psychology, 226 
Public buildings of Chinese. 335 

Questions for examination, 322 

" Ready for office ", 317 
Records, Chinese care for, 389 
Reform decrees, 20 
Religious philosophy, schools 

of, 119 
Religious thought, change in, 12 
Retribution, tracts on, 153 
Revelations of the unseen, 237 
Rewards to authors, 302 
Rhetoric in style, 115 
" Rites of Chou Dynasty ", 434 

San Chiao, Three Religions, 165 
Sacred Books, exposition of, 291 
Sappho of China, The, 82 
Scholarship, grades of, 315 
School and family training, 281 
" School for the. Sons of the 

Empire ", 371 
Schools private, not national, 

297 
Science in China, 33 
" Selections from a Thousand 

Bards", 86 
Shang Ti, The Deity, 168; At 

Temple of Heaven, 197 
Sheng jen (holy men), 243 
Sinceritv of purpose, 225 
Silk, manufacture of, 28 
" Sons of the Empire ", 376 
Sophists of China, 88 



48o 



INDEX 



Speculative philosophy in China, 

33 
Spiritualistic mediums, 236 
Spiritualistic revelations, 237 
Stages of study, 288 
State religion, No one, 196 
" Stone Classics ", The, 374 
Stone Library at Hsi An Fu, 

374 
Style, emphasis on, 295; great 

masters of, 127 
Sze Ma Ch'ien, Herodotus of 

China, 89 

Taoism, geomantic influence 
of, 183 ; gave impulse to al- 
chemy, 53 ; indigenous to 
China, 179; materialistic char- 
acter, 182; origin of, 179; 
philosophy, influence on, S7 '> 
possible relation to Judaism, 
180; rationalism of, 179; the- 
ogony of, 183 

Tartar Conquest, The, 398; in- 
cursions, 417 

Tartars and Chinese, antago- 
nism between, 421 

Tartars in ancient China, 409; 
influenced by Chinese, 426 

Temperance ode, The oldest, 79 

Temple of Heaven, 167; Em- 
peror at the, 196 

Three Religions, coalition of, 
191 ; not identical but supple- 
mentary, 193 

T'ien, Heaven, worship of, 166 



Tracts, in Chinese literature, 
148; religious character of, 
160; two celebrated, 153 

Translation and exposition of 
Sacred Books, 292 

Transmigration, doctrine of, 
153 

Treaties, character of, 440 

Tributary States of China, 428 

Trinity, Taoist conception of, 
180 

T'ung Wen College, 17 

Universe, origin of the, 38 

University, A new, 383 

University, an old, 371 ; curricu- 
lum, 381 ; number of scholars, 
378; professorships, value of, 
380; professors, duties of, 
379; scholarships sold, 377 

Virtue, Confucian doctrine of, 

174 
Virtue and Vice, sources of, 

218 
Virtues, parent, 219 

Wen Chang, Chinese Belles-let- 
tres, 124; the goal of students, 
295 

Wen Hsiang, favourable to re- 
form, 17 

Yung Wing, educational mis- 
sion, 19 



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